Young Justice: Sin and Punishment
by Knight of Black and Gold
Summary: What secrets does the Young Justice universe hold? How far does Miss Martian abuse her psychic powers? Who assists her in her endeavors? What is the criminal organization HIVE? What is the Oracle? Who are the Doom Patrol? At the center of all these mysteries: What happened to Jason Todd? IN THE PROCESS OF BEING RE WITTEN AS THE GREAT HERO CONSPIRACY
1. The Hunt

**Hi, this is my first attempt at writing fanfiction, so please fill reviews. This takes inspiration from Arkham Knight and Identity Crisis. Please Enjoy!**

 **Updated the first chapter by merging the first and second chapter.**

* * *

1 year after the Reach invasion

 **BELLE REVE**

 _Sportsmaster Perspective_

"Everyone back to their cells," the guard said

"Well next time let's get reacquainted, I could use a man of your talents here," Oswald said as he walked away with his personal guard. "The crazy's added since Arkham Asylum blew up have made the place even more of a timber box... at least we don't have to worry about the clown," even the mention of that creeps name drew shivers down Cobblepot's spine. "Us sane ones have to stick together." As he walked away Blockbuster followed like a dog on a leash. Sure Blockbuster seemed tough, but the way he was being hackled showed off his submission to Cobblepot. If Blockbuster had a sense of pride he would probably never be some servant to this hunchback. But no, he continued to walk, and if he could kiss Cobblepot's feet at that second he would. Sportsmaster saw this and came up with his answer.

" _No way_ ," he thought. " _I may be forced to eat $#%! food, in_ _$#%!_ _smelling cell, with_ _$#%!_ _mate. But no way Sportsmaster is going to be reduced to some lapdog. Unlike Blockbuster, I have a name and pride._ " As he walked away one of the guards ran up to him and slammed him against the wall.

"Hey you son of a..." Sportsmaster said before he saw what the guard pulled out. A military grade knife. This punk is trying to frame me. For what a promotion.

"Why do you think you have this knife punk" the guard said as he slipped a note into Sportsmaster's pocket. Now this intrigued him. This guard was trying to send him a message by detaining him. Why? Ra's probably has something to do with this. Since he had worked with the League of Shadows he had gotten used to the idea of Ra's having eyes everywhere even if Sportsmaster did not know where these eyes were. "Hey Bill we have to put one in ISO now."

Sportsmaster paused, he certainly did not want to go through ISO, but the note in his back pocket presented him possibly a rare opportunity. It had been 8 months since he was captured by Flash and put in Belle Reve. It only took him 1 month to decide to pounce at the first opportunity no matter the risk, even ISO. Now that opportunity presented itself to him, he would be able to reestablish his reputation as one of the only prisoners ever to escape Belle Reve. He would be able to charge triple the amount as the legend who escaped The Wall.

As he was dragged to the ISO cell, the guard did not say anything else, but he did give him a "be silent" look. "AHHHHHHHH," came out of one of the cells. ISO was a brainwashing technique used to make violent inmates... manageable. Anybody (well except the clown) who came out of those cells would be mindless zombie for weeks. As he was thrown into a space that would make a closet look big, the guard finally broke his silence. "Pretend to Scream."

Some lights started to flash but they did not hurt, so Sportsmaster followed along. "AHHHHHHHHHHH," he screamed. He took out the note and started to read it.

 _Dear Mr. Crock,_

 _I know that you are a man of high connections and high skills. I need a man for my future plans. To my understanding you currently have the ability to crush my enemies and carryout my will. When you exit this cell you will be taken to the medical wing, be sure to take this paper with you and burn it outside the prison (the last person who I broke out left a trail that had me cut my losses, literally cut him with a salami slicer). When you are in the medical wing we will replace your body with that of Hook. Then you will have to hide in laundry cart before being transferred to a food cart, then shifted out of the prison. Then my truck driver will take you to meet me. All these people in between the steps work for me so if you try to flee to The Light they will check your impulses Mr. Crock._

 _Sincerely,_

 _The Supreme Commander_

" _Well not only do I get a chance to escape this_ _$#%!_ _hole but I get to see Hook offed too_ ," he thought. He was very angry at Hook because of a rivalry they have since they fought as members of the League of Shadows. But what confused him was the statement about The Light. He had not worked for those bastards since they had killed his daughter without his permission (sure that was faked but they didn't know that), but the past can be buried with a golden shovel and cash instead of dirt. And Luthor has the cash to buy that golden shovel.

The lights stopped flashing. Realizing that the ISO session was supposed to seem over, he looked like an ISO zombie. The guard from earlier opened the cell, "Ok idiot. Let's take you back." Sportsmaster complied like an ISO zombie would. The guard took him down the hall to the medical wing rather than the cell. There he was placed in a bed. A nurse and a team of doctors came in to seemingly check on him, but in reality they replaced him with a body that seemed exactly like his.

" _Damn they did some plastic surgery on Hook_ " he thought. A laundry cart appeared at the door of the hallway.

"Go," the nurse said. Sportsmaster runs to the cart and jumps in. The cart pusher then moves him for about 10 minutes before being told to prepare to jump into the adjacent cart containing food. After jumping in the cart he was covered in food, but stayed silent figuring it was part of the disguise. Finally he could tell the end of the escape has come when he heard a door open and could smell the swamp outside. He was then loaded into a truck. The truck started to move. He did not want to exit until being told to do so, League of Shadows training to never do anything unnecessary. Then he heard an explosion, then another, and another.

"A _re they firing at us!_ " he thought. This caused him to panic and jump out of the cart, then attempted to jump out of the truck. He opened the truck door to jump out the back he jumped onto the road but before he could hit the ground, he was pulled back into the truck and hit the back wall before the doors shut.

"Ha, you got jumped by a simple explosion Mr. Crock, my father expects more from you," a female voice taunted you.

"The Supreme Commander?" he asked.

"No, no, no that is my father, but when I tell daddy that you tried to escape, prepare for the threats in the letter."

"You should have told me that there was going to be an exp-" he said before being cut off.

"No you should not have failed period. Failure is Failure Mr. Crock, and the best way to prevent failure is to make the results of failure clear."

"That sounds like the League Miss..."

"Darhk," at the mention of that name confused him. He had heard that name before when he was with the League, but only of a threat that has long since passed. Then he lost consciousness.

 **HIVE CHOPPER**

 _The Supreme Leader POV_

"Hello Maxwell, it's been the longest time since we have chatted. If I didn't know any better you would be stuck at the lowest pit of hell where the most corrupt sleazebags are kept," a man said into the phone.

"Capitol Hill, no Damien that is across Pennsylvania Ave. Here I am surrounded by respected military personal, loyal civil servants, and decades of fine art and history," came from the phone.

"HAHAHA, oh that's why I picked you to lead this country Maxwell, you have actual charm unlike some of our partners."

"Well technically you did not vote for me Damien."

"Hey! had Governor Blood won it would have been easier to control the meta human community."

"True, but I would also have to deal with his kids."

"Mr. President, the President of Enrea will be arriving soon," a younger voice said out of the phone.

"I have to go," the President says.

"We can talk about why I wanted to talk later President Horne," Damien Darhk then hangs up the phone.

"Sir we have reached the destination," his pilot said.

 **HIVE FORWARD OPPERATING BASE, NEW ORLEANS**

The doors automatically opened for him and a golden staircase appeared to help him descend four feet. Damien loved the bling. He loved looking like the highest class in the land because it instantly let people know that he was the king of the world.

"Father, Crock is waiting in the interrogation room," his youngest daughter Nora. He made her his second lieutenant because he needed somebody loyal to him, which is why he took the nepotism charge.

"Very good, did anything happen," he responded

"He tried to jump out of the van when our agents covered their tracks." THIS ASSHOLE ENDANGERED MY DAUGHER!

"That could have compromised the entire mission, patrol with the guards, and begin evacuating the Facility. There is a good chance that the facility saw him jump out and they are now considering this an escape operation rather than a terrorist attack."

"That seems a bit extreme, we cannot replace the base in New Orleans tha-"

"We will establish two new ones in Atlanta and Dallas, to cover our strategic losses here."

Damien walks to the interrogation cell, "Well Mr. Crock, you could have been such a useful asset to me , I even wrote you a letter. There was an easy way and a hard way for me to get this information from you, and because you endangered my daughter you are about to get the latter. My brilliant plan would have worked out so well for you Mr. Crock, I bust you out, a body with your face is found in the medical wing, all my agents there die and cannot be traced back to me, and all those dead prisoners bodies would end up in my hands. All that sweet meta-human DNA is still mine anyways but now you are a liability rather than an asset. Oh I forgot to introduce myself to you. Damien, Damien Darhk."

One Day Later

 **WATCHTOWER**

 _Batgirl perspective_

The Team had assembled Robin , Miss Martian, Tigress, and Lagoon Boy all looking at Batgirl on the Watchtower. The group was still waiting for Superboy before they would start mission debrief. "Where's Conner?" M'gann asked. Robin looked at Batgirl before observing a visually upset Lagoon Boy at mention of his ex-girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's name.

"He said that his date with Wendy Harris was going to end around now, so maybe he is still on this date," Robin said somewhat tone death to the ex in the room. Tigress and Batgirl look at M'gann expecting a reaction to learning that her former boyfriend has moved on, something she did not expect to happen because Connor has still dated M'gann half the time he had been alive. Hell, he and M'gann were named after the couple in her favorite TV series! She helped make him as he came out of that pod around that couple.

"Oh ok" M'gann responded, with no major emotional change that everyone had been expecting.

" _Maybe she shape shifted her face to avoid showing emotions_ " Batgirl thought

"Recognized. Superboy, B-04," as Conner walked out of the Zeta tube. Conner runs towards the command center.

"Sorry I'm late," Conner said.

"No problem," Batgirl responded. When he appeared before her, she noticed that his pants were on backwards, his jacket inside out, and he was wearing his socks inside out. She looked at Robin who had eyeballed to her the same idea... just a more innocent version of why he had to take all his clothes off. Rather than go through an awkward discussion of Superboy's personal life she dived into the mission briefing. "Last night there were a series of bombings in Belle Reve and killing 100 prisoners and 10 faculty workers."

"Sportsmaster?," Tigress asked somewhat concerned.

"Sportsmaster escaped." A video appeared before them showing Sportsmaster jumping out a truck. "This is our only lead into what happened at Belle Reve since there appeared to be no attempt to break anyone else out. These bombings were done to inflict maximum casualties on the prisoners in Belle Reve. We were able to track the truck to New Orleans. Our mission is to find Sportsmaster and who was connected to these bombings."

"Wait. Why is he being flown back into the Truck?" Robin asked.

"We believe that a telekinetic meta human partner of Sportsmaster did that. It's possible a group of metahumans organized this." Everyone instantly thought about the Light, their most organized adversary, each leader posed a grave threat to the earth, combined they were almost invincible. The almost of course being the Justice League. The team started to leave but then Batgirl said, "Conner can you talk with me for a second."

"Uh oh, boy of steel is not the boy of time," La'gaan said. Joy in his voice that he can claim superiority over Conner. When the others had left Batgirl tried to speak only to be intercepted.

"Listen, I'm sorry for-"

"Listen I'm not going to yell at you for trying to put your pants on after your romp," Superboy is confused and blushed on how Batgirl figured out exactly what he had been doing.

"T-T-T-That's, T-T-That-" he could barely form words before she started speaking.

"If you're wondering, turn around your pants, invert your socks and jacket, then come to the Bio-ship. But good for you for being able to hit third base Super Stud." That last comment blustered him speechless.

 **BIO-SHIP, OVER NEW ORLEANS**

As they flew over the city everyone was quiet, not wanted to start talking about the touchy subject of Artemis father. Everybody kept this silence because the only way to talk about the mission would be to ask what Artemis thinks about where her father might be hiding. The closest thing the team had experienced was when Nightwing and Batman had been estranged between his firing as Robin until after the death of the Joker. Batgirl had not personally seen this as she only started her career a little bit after Joker's death, by then the two of them started talking with each other without tension for the first time in years according to Megan and Zatanna.

This felt different since this was not fighting with their parents. This was hunting down their own father. He was a super villain but still. Eventually Robin asked, "so what is the plan to track Sportsmaster"

"We found the truck returned to a rental service, we should probably start interrogating the owner there," Batgirl said

"Should I read his mind and figure out who rented the truck," Miss Martian said

"Excellent Start M'gann. Should we go down to the rental station."

"Don't bother we are close enough for me to do it from here." Superboy in the corner started to look concerned.

"How about we look for video cameras and run a photo ID search?" Superboy said.

"I could probably run a city wide search if we have a photo rather than psychic imagery," Robin replied.

"Alright, that seems like a more secure bet," Batgirl said. Then they flew closer to the station so Robin drop down and check for surveillance camera.

 **OUTSIDE HIVE FORWARD OPPERATING BASE**

 _Mysterious POV_

The scanner he had placed outside the truck rental station picked up what he expected, an alien ship floating above it. Probably not here to take a truck to dissect it and understand its purpose like with cows in those old sci-fi movies. "Oracle you reading this."

The woman in his communications then said "Yeah, that scanner should be able to detect all Kinetic movement more than a Ton."

"Better send a thank you to those Russians."

"They probably want to hear from the guy who stole their technology."

"Or the girl who sent their wives the address of the brothel they go to sending them into a nasty divorce."

"You told me to do that."

"True. What can you pick up from the camera?"

"It appears that Robin has jumped ship... jumped Plane?... jumped spacecraft?" as she fumbled her words. Arkham Knight pondered what Robin would try to get from the gas station.

"Oracle, how did they find out about Sportsmaster's escape from the Belle Reve so quickly. It should have taken them at least a week to find out that Sportsmaster's body was Hook's," they only knew that because of a camera system he set up in HIVE's New Orleans FOB. Oracle was quiet for a while.

"Think I got it. I accesses the Enhanced Image on a security camera by creating a master account in the entire system allowing me not only control over the camera's but the doors, the bathrooms, and the-" The video appeared on the screen of his helmet. "-outside wall." The video showed Sportsmaster jumping out of the truck before being pulled back in. Probably Nora Darhk's work.

"If the league saw this video you got me then they probably also think Sportsmaster himself, rather than Darhk, orchestrated his escape." He figured that they were following the truck, but what was their next goal.

 _"The individual carrying the goods are either the most trusted of the most or only they can transport it in a heist. If you think it's the former..." he remembered that advice._

He had said that during the Cluemaster case. He then told her, "Oracle, they are trying to track the truck driver to the rest of HIVE by inserting her photo ID into The Brother." The Brother, an scanning system that allowed for an advanced AI scan of all the nation's security cameras publically owned. As you would expect from government backed projects they are also extremely easy to manipulate and hack for your own use.

"If they are going to track Nora Darhk they should hit a dead end," she reminded him. They knew this from personal experience because they had spent months using the Justice League's system to track Darhk the same way.

"Robin should be able to us the privately owned camera's here to find a photo then insert it into The Brother. If we put our own photo of Darhk in the system outside this HIVE FOB, they would probably follow and I should be able to sneak in under the cover of the chaos of an attack."

"Wait-Wait-Wait I thought you told me not to inform anyone about the bases you keep track of."

"HIVE is abandoning their FOB anyway, and if they think the Jr. Justice League is responsible for finding them, they will evacuate the facility and burn anything valuble left behind." Oracle and I have about two dozen bases bugged across North America. There may be some HIVE bases in the Eastern Hemisphere but they have not been able to track them down yet. "The main goal is to bug Darhk's ship and find their master HQ."

"What if there are no anti-robot-zombie-ninja soldier thingy... just what if they don't have heavy hitters among them?"

"They match heavy hitters and strategically users when going into the unknown. They skew balance towards or away from heavy hitters when they have maximum information. That their protocol."

"Makes sense, prepare for everything I guess."

" _Prepare for everything_." That same voice reminded him. He was the mission commander for this team, they clearly inherited his beliefs.

"They are up for it so start," he said.

"Got it I'll pull some of your videos on Nora, insert them into the security cameras and have them track her to the HIVE base," she said.

"Good."

"Only what do you do when they realize that they are clearly photo shopped and they want to know who was accessing the Brother."

"Do it through the camera's rather than our access to The Brother, the league only has access through the processing center not the individual camera's themselves, allowing you to hide your tracks. If she randomly appears they will most likely they will think her magical abilities will have something to do with why she appeared in the video and why things seem off. Use one of the spell videos we have of Nora Darhk."

"Thanks, I will use her trying to cast that execute spell on me," she said with the enthusiasm you expect.

"Make sure she is not randomly firing stuff or mouthing anything incriminating, we need to give them minimal information on her and HIVE."

"Like mouthing what?" she asked.

"My name?"

"Arkham Knight or Jason Todd?"

"Both, I'm going to slip in now so when they attack they'll focus on external threats rather than scan the building for anyone who slipped in. Arkham Knight out."

* * *

 **Hi, just wanted to give you a visual on what each character is wearing. The YJ team is wearing their stuff from the end of Invasion. Arkham Knight's costume is the one from the game but the center is a black Bat-symbol. As for who Oracle is... NO SPOILERS**


	2. Justice

3 Hours later

 **OUTSIDE HIVE FOB**

 _Superboy POV_

The facility seemed just like every other warehouse they had raided. A normal, in poor condition, storage facility. When they break down that wall though, they will see an advanced science lab, or a bunch of guns at a arms sale, or an alien invasion platform, or... that time they caught Nightwing and Tarantula in the act. Zatanna spent the next month treating him as though he did not exist. Still have no idea on how that guy found a girlfriend in three hours after breaking up with Zatanna.

"Prepare to drop," Batgirl commanded. Robin, Tigress, and Batgirl attached their ropes and dropped. Superboy and Lagoon Boy jumped. Then Miss Martian floated over the facility. Batgirl then gave psychic instructions. " _First stage of infiltration will be Miss Martian and I sneaking in, till then await further instructions_ "

" _Neptune's Beard, why do you hog all the fun,_ " Lagoon Boy thought.

" _Because I have stealth training by the guy right behind you_." Lagoon Boy then proceeds to look behind himself absolutely believing for Batman to be there.

" _I can't believe you actually fell for that_ ," Superboy thought. Though to be fair I never figured out how he was able to sneak up on me like that. Robin and Tigress also chuckled at Lagoon Boy's panic.

" _Facility Infiltrated,_ " Miss Martian thought.

" _Guys we are looking at an abandonment of this facility, but there are some serious high tech here. Incubation pods, guns, grenade, I even see some helicopter_ ," Batgirl thought.

" _Guys I've b- AHHHHHHH_."

" _MEGAN_ ," Superboy and Lagoon Boy thought.

" _Full on assault NOW_ ," Batgirl declared. After the declaration Superboy charged and Lagoon Boy transformed and stormed the facility. They tore down one of the walls on the side. When they entered they saw an extremely pale person surrounded by metal that seemed imbedded into his body. He had green eyes and a face mask on. He held himself as if he had no control over his arms. This guy was going to pay for hurting Megann. Superboy then charged at him, causing his facemask retracted and a red light appeared in his mouth. Then a plasma bolt appeared, hitting Superboy and blasting him into the next building. " _Superboy!"_ he did not give a response. " _SUPERBOY!_ "

"*Cough* *Cough* That *Cough* *Cough* hurt" Superboy said. " _I'm alright._ "

" _Whatever this guy is he is seriously dangerous, Robin call backup now_ "

 **ELSWHERE IN THE HIVE FOB**

 _Sportsmaster POV_

"AHHHHHHHHHH" he screamed. "What are you doing to me?!"

"Well Mr. Crock, it appears as though Ra's has blocked some of your memories from you, I am going to retrieve them," Darhk said. "You see our brain divides memories into certain segments. This may get too complicated for you so I will only explain the relevant part. When people hide their traumatic memories and nightmares from themselves they can never access them. I, when I worked for your former employer, made a technique to hide regular memories and facts there. So to access that part of the brain and retrieve those memories, I'll have to create some new trauma for you Mr. Crock."

"AHHHHHHHH," something started flashing before his eyes. Then the pain stopped, and he woke up. He was in bed with Paula. What was he doing here? It was his old apartment but... nicer. Then Paula started to wake up.

"You ok lover," she said.

"Um..." he did not know how to respond. "I think so."

"Well I thought you would feel better today of all days." Then something happened that stunned him. She started walking. Fucking walking.

"What wrong?" She asked curiously. "You seem like you had a bad dream."

"Uh.. I-" then all of a sudden the room changed. They were in their dining room, with Artemis, Jade, and Lian.

"HAPPY ANNIVERSARY," his girls said.

"Thank-," then an explosion hit the wall and troops started coming in.

"Well, the whole family is here?" he recognized that voice. "I thought I could just torture you, but these girls will make excellent hostages." Savage. VANDAL FUCKING SAVAGE. "I need one alive, feel free to do what you want with the rest."

"No you won't you son of a bitch," Sportsmaster said. Sportsmaster charged at him, but he was easily taken down.

"Why yo-," Paula tried to say. BLANG. A gun went off and her body went down.

"PAULA!" Sportsmaster yelled at her body. He saw Savage's men load Artemis and Jade onto a helicopter. Then everything started to blur, images of Savage were conflated with those of Darhk, then he hear Darhk speak

"HAHAHA. You still care about your wife and daughters! After everything you did to them, why do you think they would care about you at all. Now. Where is he going?" Darhk said.

 **HANGGER BAY OF HIVE FOB**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

"Where is he going?" Darhk said. Arkham Knight was watching the interrogation through a camera in the room. He had bugged the place because he wanted to know anything Darhk might have. He was watching the video as he snuck his way into the bunker. He did not want to attack any of the guards, since he didn't want Darhk to know somebody made it this far into the facility. If he thought that they had only made it to the front entrance, where the team was battling one of Darhk's NEOHUMAN project, he might get lazy and fly straight to HIVE's master HQ, a base only known of by the top brass at HIVE, run by soldier who get brainwashed out of information the moment they leave. He always had trouble thinking that anybody would be willing to go through the pain _she_ had inflicted on him when her brainwipping went horribly wrong.

"HE... HE's GOING TO DERIBA CALDERA," Sportsmaster said. Great, now he and Damien Darhk both know where Vandal Savage is. Now the question is which of them gets to him first.

"Sudan? Well we should prepare a strike team. I'll lead it," Darhk said. He then started to leave the room. "Leave him, it's better to have him caught by the Jr. Justice League. I've locked all memories of our encounters. Let's leave them chasing this end long enough for us to cover any other trails that could lead to the discovery of HIVE." Then he left.

 **FRONT ENTERENCE OF THE HIVE FOB**

 _Robin (Tim Drake) POV_

The cyborg was ultra powerful. Superboy was in serious pain after a single hit from that laser. " _Everybody aim for the back of the head of the robot, that where the connecting cables appear to be._ " Batgirl thought to the team. I run over to Tigress to take cover behind a console.

"You ever seen something like this," Robin asked her.

"There was AMAZO, but he was significantly less human," Tigress remarked

"Why are so many robots guys?"

"Honestly you would think these old men who make robots would make women for comfort." Robin blushed at that statement. They both jumped out of the way when Lagoon Boy came flying through the console. The cyborg jumped to the upper platform they were all on, looked to Tigress, and started loading the laser it shot at Superboy.

"NO!" Robin yelled. Then Superboy came from the side and punched the robot through the wall.

"Time for some payback," he said as he charged at Robot

" _Everybody all right_ " Miss Martian said.

" _M'GANN!_ " Superboy and Lagoon Boy thought simultaneously. The robot then had some boxes thrown at it.

" _Superboy, Lagoon Boy, and Miss Martian, take the robot head on while we try to hit from the back,_ " Batgirl commanded.

" _Rodger,_ " everybody conformed.

Superboy charged at the cyborg. The cyborg then hit him back against at wall and started charging its laser. Then Miss Martian threw some boxes at him, then he looked towards her. Tigress took her chance, jumping at the cyborg. But then it did something unexpected, it back jumped to avoid her sword. That move requires ninja skill. " _Batgirl this thing is a ninja!_ " Robin said.

" _Well that just what we needed from a robot. A ninja upgrade,_ " Batgirl thought.

Lagoon boy charged at it and held onto one side. " _Hold him down,_ " Lagoon Boy thought. Superboy got the idea and held his other side. It seemed as though the robot was going to break through before it was hit with more force bringing it to its knees.

" _GO!_ " Miss Martian said. Robin saw his opening he charged towards the robots back and fired his taser just as it broke free of Superboy and Lagoon Boy tossing them both in opposite directions. It hit the back of its neck where all the wires were and activated. The robot short circuited, not doing much, before just falling over.

"Nice job Robin", Tigress said. "Now let's-" then a sound appeared.

"*BEEP*" a red light also showed up.

"*BEEP*," Robin and Batgirl realized what it was.

"EVERYBODY GET AWAY FROM THAT THING," Batgirl yelled. Everybody started to panic and fled from window, door, or hole in the warehouse.

"*BEEP**BEEP**BEEP**BEEP**BEEEEEEEEEEEE, " and then the whole facility exploded.

 **HIVE FACILITY HANGER**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

Darhk's helicopter is stored underground. This facility is larger than I thought, they connected the under part of a warehouse a quarter of a mile away. The moment this helicopter takes off in the air though the stealth technology will make it invisible to the naked eye. No satellite tracking means I have to place a tracker on it and see where this leads. As he loaded the tracker launcher future in his gun. The gun he had was custom designed by him. The gun had settings such as stun shot, bullets, tracer, and flame thrower. They could be used at medium/long range when in its completed form. The guns can then be disconnected and used at shot range. In this case he had it at long range and tracer. He fired. The tracer hit the side of the Helicopter just as Darhk entered. Then the helicopter started to leave, as he heard an explosion.

"Oracle, what was that explosion," he contacted his advisor.

"I don't know, but looking from The Brother it started in the entrance to the Frontal Operator Base," she responded

"Forward Operating Base," he corrected. If the explosion took place there it must mean one thing. "Oracle, that must have been the self destruct on the NEOHUMAN."

"My god do you think they are ok."

Damn it. "I'm going back, if any of them are hurt its on me." He had used them as his pawns and it came to this. As he hurried down the hall way when he saw someone come out of the darkness. "Who are you?" He yelled.

The figure came charging at him. "Prepare to go down scum bag," the person said.

Sportsmaster. He must have escaped from his cell. Should have expected as much from Artemis's father. As Sportsmaster charged at him Arkham Knight split up his guns into dual pistols and fired at him. Sportsmaster jumped off the wall to dodge his bullets. When Sportsmaster lunged at him with a crowbar he dropped one of his guns into a holster. He grabbed the crowbar with his hand and tried to aim his gun at Sportsmaster. Sportsmaster grabbed his arm holding his gun. "Batman using a gun? What happened when I was in there?"

"I'm not Batman." He declared. He filtered through his gun settings to flame thrower.

"Pointy ears, Bat-logo, and fancy gadgets... sure your no-" then he started using his flame thrower which panicked Sportsmaster. Sportsmaster then jumped behind a crate. "What's your story kid? JL? Light? This HIVE thing?"

"Formerly JL, but now I'm going to build my own side."

"A new world order, good luc-" Sportsmaster saw a grenade and tried to jump away. After jumping he was pulled towards the grenade, then all the force had him pulled towards the wall.

"Implosion grenade, pulls you toward it rather than releasing an external force, can't escape this one."

"Oh now you are going to send me back to Belle Reve now right?"

Arkham Knight pulls his gun on Sportsmaster. "Nah, rather, this is for Blue Beatle."

"Wai-" then silence as he stuffed the gun in Sportsmaster's mouth..

"Tell Joker-Robin say's hello,"

"BANG," as his gun went off.

"Oracle, Sportsmaster is dead," Arkham Knight said.

"Well, that surprising," Oracle said.

"Sarcasm?"

"I don't think you're going to change anytime soon."

"Thanks, what have you found on Deriba Caldera."

"It's in Sudan."

"Why do you think Savage is there?"

"This is the 50,000 year old right?"

"Yes"

"There is a crater there. If he got his powers from a meteorite it might have created that crater. And that would line up with the genetic evidence to support the out of Africa theory."

"The out of Africa theory?"

"The idea that humans migrated out of Africa into Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, and the Yellow River civilization. If Savage has lived 50,000 years, he would have probably lived in modern Sudan."

"Ok, so his private HQ is his home. Time to go pay him a visit"

 **OUTSIDE DESTORIED HIVE HQ**

 _Tigress POV_

We just got attacked by a killer robot that can take down a (half) Kryptonian. Dad what have you gotten yourself into. I just thought of him as dad didn't I. She could only see Batgirl and Superboy. The others must have escaped a different way. Better go find them.

"What happened," they heard someone yell at them from the sky. She could tell by the tint who this was.

"Caption Atom," she said.

"We were attacked by some robot. We defeated it before it self-destructed," Batgirl said. "We lost Sportsmaster."

"Hold on, we have not lost him yet," Robin's voice came out of the smoke. He was with Lagoon Boy and Miss Martian. "We found a tunnel connecting somewhere. This might be where Sportsmaster headed."

"Alright lets go," Tigress declared.

"Wait," Batgirl said. "This is an underground structure right."

"Yes," Lagoon Boy said.

"Then if another one of those things explode down there we could all be trapped."

"Neptune's Beard, we are here to catch Sportsmaster, I'm going after him." Lagoon boy then stormed off

"Lagoon Boy!" Batgirl yelled.

"No arguing him, what's the worst that can happen" Tigress said.

 **HIVE UNDERGROUND**

"T-T-T-Thats-" she could not give a complete answer.

"Sportsmaster?!" Robin declared.

"Great Poseidon's Barnacles," Lagoon Boy said.

None of them could believe what they were looking at. Sportsmaster, her father, was dead. Who had done this?

"Why would they-" she said.

"We will figure that out later?" Barbra said. She then pulled her aside. "Listen, I want you to go spend time with your sister."

"Listen I can-"

"Justice League protocol remember. I am putting you on leave for a week."

"Alright she declared." She knew what she had to do. She picked up her phone and started to dial. "Mom." She said into the phone. "It's about dad."


	3. The Eternal Evil

1 day later

 **ARKHAM KNIGHT'S SHIP, DERIBA CALDERA, SUDAN**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

This is where Savage was made huh. Doesn't look like much. He was looking at a small mountain and trees on top of a mountain. If he is here he must be underground. Weird that an immortal would spend his private time in the ground. Wonder if he regrets not being able to die. Well, I will be able to fix that.

"Oracle, can we scan the underground of this area."

"Yes, ok. Uhh... We can create a seismic shock large enough to scan the area we will be able to use the sensors in the Knight-Wing-"

"That name is already taken."

"Spell it with a K."

"Nobody will be able to tell the difference."

"IN THE WING we should be able to scan for any caverns, manmade or otherwise bellow."

"Blow up the surface above, that's an extremely stealthy entrance. Why don't I blast LMFAO across his house," he said with sarcasm.

"Then we have no idea how to get into his HQ." He thought that the stealth option was best since he was dealing with somebody that has gone toe to toe with just about every member of the Justice League. While Savage's powers are not completely known, it is going to take a lot to take him down. He could take substantial amounts of pain Probably a result of his immortality.

"Alright I'm going to bomb it," he declared. The ship was armed with lasers, machine guns, bombs, and a tractor beam with stealth, sonic speed thrusters, and an aquatic mode. As he started arming the bomb he moved it to the edge of the crater lake. "Preparing to drop."

The hatch was released and the bombs fell. "The Quaker" as these bombs are know, are Queen Industries designed and built. Used by the US military in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very reliable, excess production was caused by the end of the Enrea-Bialyia war early. Luckily they sold it off to a Central Asian nation in the mid-2000s that collapsed about 1 year ago, allowing me to pick a couple of these up in the ensuing chaos.

"BOOOOOOOOM," and as powerful as a Daisy Cutter.

"The scanners are picking up an underground cave connected from some sort of hole at the edge." Oracle said. Arkham Knight moved the plane to where the scanners showed the entrance to be.

"Oracle the ground entrance is sealed how thick is it?" Arkham Knight asked.

"If the scanners are not picking it up, then less than 1 foot thick."

"I can use the explosive gel. Arkham Knight out."

Arkham Knight jumped down to the entrance. He hit the ground. "CLANCK," metal? There must be a door. If this is a high tech security system he should prepare for the worse. As he placed the explosive gel on the entrance then took a few steps back. "BOOM," the door blew off. He used the remote control on his ship to use the camera to see the entrance. When he pulls up the video he was surprised. There was no defense robots. No soldiers, no anything. He decided to go in. He hit the ground and realized this was a cave. All rock on the side but too dark to see what was happening.

FLASH. Lights lit up a hallway and he started to see a cave with pictures hanging off them. On both sides the photos seemed to be from the middle ages. He looked at the titles below them: "Russia 1632," "France 1840," and "Caribbean 1760." These must have been his identities throughout time." There were hundreds of them. They were all he could see until he got to a dome structure and saw a series of stairs in it. Just as he entered the dome he saw the last one. "Germany 1943." When he got into the dome he saw the stairs connected to a throne which Savage was sitting on surrounded by weapons lodged into the ground. "Well Batman? This is interesting." Savage said

"I'm not Batman." Arkham Knight said.

"Are you sure?" He asked. The costume similarities and the Bat-logo made him sure that he was Batman.

"Why did you let me in here so easily?"

"I have lived for 50,000 years. You really think that anything can scare me enough to get security."

"I can." Ego, huh. That's why he let him in here. Well that got me "killed," thinking that everyone was weaker than me. Seems as though Savage is going to make a similar mistake.

"Yeah right." Savage then jumped off of his throne and towards Arkham Knight. Arkham Knight pulled out his gun and fired at Savage. Savage threw a knife at the gun. He was shot but the knife hit the barrel making the front half of his gun useless. One of the bullets hit Savage in the eye. He used his thruster pack to fly backwards missing Savages pounce.

"Well I never expected to see Batman fire a gun." Savage declared. That was probably the smartest thing about having the costume look like Batman. Nobody expects for me to pull out a gun.

"Now you believe that I am not Batman," Arkham Knight responded. I have to be able to minimalism his movements. He is out of his left eye. I should try to cut off his left arm. He charged at Savage only to have a lance thrown at him. He dodged it but had to attack Savage from his right rather than his left. He chucked a shuriken at Savage before being punched in the gut by him. Savage then picked up a sword and was about to start swinging at him. Then his shuriken can back hit Savage's left arm before exploding off Savage's arm.

"Ok that was smart." Savage said with absolutely no pain in his voice. Arkham Knight then proceeded to charge at Savage. He punched him only for his fist to be blocked by Savage. He then swung at Savage's leg with nothing in his hand. Savage looked away before not being able to feel his legs. Then when he looked at Arkham Knights other hand he saw a flaming sword.

Magic swords that appear and disappear at will, better thank mo-Talia for these. "Ok that was very smart."

Savage then fell to the ground missing three of his limbs. Arkham Knight then pulled out his gun before shooting him in the other eye and the last arm. He then ripped off Savage's last arm with his hand.

"A bloodthirsty one-" Savage was cut off when Arkham Knight removed his voice box.

"Oracle I have Savage captured."

"Alright. Why don't you come home and we can put him in a cell and plo-," Oracle was cut off by Arkham Knight.

"Not taking that chance. I'm launching the raid now."

"NOW. You have never snuck into this facility before. Don't you need to scout the place?"

"Actually I have snuck into this place before."

"Ok so you- Wait! Why did you sneak into an all girls facility?" she asked somewhat angrily

"Why do you want to know? Jealous that you don't know about the times I have snuck into your room?" He was cut off from communication to Oracle. If he could see her face she would probably be ultra-red blushing right now. Though if he were standing there she would throw something at him. But he can't go back to see her now. First trip. Themysciran Embassy, Washington D.C. He pulled Savage down the hallway as he tried to plot out his next step.

Five hours later

 **ATLANTIC OCEAN**

Almost at the facility better contact Oracle.

"Oracle reconnect." He asked. After about a minute she responded.

"Okay-Okay-Okay. What do you want?"

"Can you pull up the last few hours of video and Zeta Tube data from the League database. Tell me who is in DC and who is not for the next five hours."

"Alright, we have Captain Marvel doing some sort of public relations thing. Black Canary and Green Arrow on a date. and..." she paused. "Wonder Woman at the Themysciran Embassy.

"Well shit," ok now I just have to go through a version of Superman immune to Kryptonite... This should be fun. "Oracle can you adapt the Mad Hatter technology to modify what people see." He kept some Mad Hatter tech on the ship because they can keep people from moving any limbs, really good if you want to take prisoners.

"To an extent. Why?"

"Can you make everyone in the Embassy look like super villains to somebody who has the technology on them?"

"What are you thinking?"

"We create a distraction that has Wonder Woman start attacking people and members of the League. Everybody responds by trying to stop Wonder Woman rather than looking for infiltrators."

"And you get your revenge by embarrassing the league on live TV."

"This is not revenge. Wonder Woman was not part of the Cabal that got me 'killed'."

"But that's your ultimate goal."

"My ultimate goal is to eliminate all evil in the world. This is a side quest. Hunt those that tried to kill a 14 year old and brainwash Deathstroke's son."

"Don't they think Joker kidnapped you and Scarecrow and-what was his name-Condiment King and some other villains killed you."

"Why do you remember Condiment King out of all of them? Sure but they must have known to some degree trying to stop me, cutting off my communications, and Miss Martian's brain blast, must have played some part. Also it's not the entire League and Team only some of them."

"Still why don't you go tell Batman what they did?"

"Sigh If I tell Batman he believes me, but what about Superboy? Is he going to believe his ex did what she did to me? What about Rocket? She going to believe that her friends have been conspiring behind their backs for years? It's going to be a League civil war if I do that."

"Then what are you hoping to accomplish." She was never that conformable fighting the world's greatest heroes, even if I was the only thing protecting her from HIVE.

"Because of them I was beaten to death by a clown. And they were happy about that."

"You dont-"

"I DO KNOW THAT. They didn't want their secrets to be spilled, so they covered up what they did and couldn't care about any other damage they caused, not to me or anyone else. What happened to me, I will never be able to get over. I want them to suffer in ways that they will remember every day they wake up, and that it was their own fault this happened to them."


	4. Flashback: Out of His League

Team Year: 4

 **THE CAVE**

 _Robin (Jason Todd) POV_

So I have been Robin for a little over three years right now. And in those three years I've managed to fight a few aliens, robots, and gods. I'm sure that there is nothing I have not seen. Except been to space. Now that was going to change. "Robin you coming?" Rocket asked.

"To the moon. Of course," he replied. What kid did not want to see space?

"Well it's not the moon but an orbital space station," Miss Martian corrected.

"Alright kiddos line up," he heard Black Canary say.

"We are not kids," Karen moaned. Everybody agreed. Nobody like to be treated like a kid. Especially a bunch of teenagers who had saved the world a couple of times over.

"Sure you aren't," Black Canary says sarcastically as she implemented temporary codes for the Team. Rocket and her boyfriend Noble were the first to go.

 **"Designation B09, Rocket. Designation S1, Noble Augustus."**

"Why are we bringing a civilian?" Robin asked.

"They want a engagement photo in the Watchtower," Zatanna replied. "And they want to make some announcement."

"Oh my god she's pregnant."

"Oh please that's not-"

"What could possibly be more important than an engagement and why else would Batman be ok with this."

"Why wouldn't he be ok with us making a visit?"

"Photographic evidence of the Justice League's secret HQ. Are you sure he is going to allow that out there?"

"Well if you tell him, we will kill you?" Black Canary said in a weirdly playful voice.

That somewhat scared him. "Did you not invite Nightwing?," he asked Zatanna

 **"Designation B10, Tempest. Designation B11, Aquagirl."**

Zatanna then put on a psychotic smile. "Of course I would like to bring him along," she said. "Only if he was not going from door to door tonight selling his body to every harlot in town until he has been ridden so hard that he makes a 30 year old bike look new."

She was still mad about the Tarantula incident. Can't blame her.

 **"Designation A09, Karen Beecher. Designation A10, Mal Duncan"**

"Well didn't you break up with him for the second time?" She looked enraged at his attempt to justify what Nightwing did.

"Still I expected him to spend AT LEAST ONE DAY before finding a new girlfriend. Don't be like your man-whore brother, find one girl and stay forever."

"Okkkkay," he said quite scared of her when she's angry. She will probably be mad at him for a long time.

"Come on he has probably tried to teach you some pick up techniques, back flip flower, reading a poem upside down, you know Nightwing stuff

"You know he doesn't talk to me right." Nightwing almost always avoided him when he could. Batman too so it was probably a casualty of Nightwing and Batman's bad relationship. Nightwing had only ever talked to him on team missions assigned by anyone but Batman, and when they rarely intersected on a case.

"Honestly I don't understand why, well besides the credit card thing. I mean he is the nicest person ever. How did you guys first meet."

"Uh," not under the most favorable of circumstanced, "Scarecrow mission, I was Robin for a month and Batman and I tracked him separately from Nightwing without telling each other. Then we tried to hide in the same spot to spy on Scarecrow then he attacked me thinking I was some sort of illusion. Our cover got blown and he was shot in the arm." She paused wondering if that is the end of the story. "Then the second time we met he jumped onto the ground as I took the Batmobile out of an alley and hit him with it breaking a rib." Now she seemed confused. "And the third time I was told by Batman to get his help on a murder case. He was sleeping so I snuck in with a League of Shadows sword covered in blood. He then woke up from his couch and attacked me."

She looked confused for a second then, "ha HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA," she kept laughing as they entered the Zeta tube.

 **"Designation B08, Zatanna. Designation B13, Robin."**

 **THE WATCHTOWER**

The laughter continued through the portal.

"So-hahahaha- so he thinks you are trying to kill him! World's greatest detective taught him well."

"I don't-actually that is probably right," there were other factors, but that was probably true. "I think he does not want to talk with Bruce and he kind of views me as a replacement Bruce got so they don't have to talk."

"He doesn't like being replaced!" she said sarcastically, "Buts its totally chill for him to plan Netflix and Chill as you break up with your girlfriend." Yeah she was never going to get over what they saw. "If only I could warn the next harlot he sees?"

They had been talking and walking and neither of them had realized that they were about to bump into Mal. When they realized they stopped.

"Wow," Jason said as they stared at the earth. He had seen some of the pictures that had shown earth from space but your own eyes gave you a new perspective.

"We have saved that thing about a dozen times by now," Miss Martian declared.

"Yeah. How did you guys get this thing?"

"Guardian of the Universe." They looked up and saw that it was Green Lantern. "We were looking for a new head quarters and the Lantern Corps had a spare base a few systems away. Stealth technology is the best in the universe and no Earth tech can detect it. Hence why it has been secret all this time."

"Interesting," Tempest said. "The Green Lantern Corp has dozens of these."

"Well newer models."

"So we got their old junk," Robin said.

"You think this is junk." Lantern said mockingly as the lights turned off.

"Well, junk would do that." Robin said as the lights were off.

"I would assume so too," he turned around to see the lights turn on and the British Prime Minster standing before them. The PM was probably the biggest backer of the Justice League in the world. Because of that he knew of some of the Justice League's identities, the existence of the Watchtower, and even had his own private Zeta-Tube! He had probably met every member of the League and the team by now.

"2 against 1, seems like I'm winning."

"That's bizarre. I'll check in on that," John Stewart said.

"What brings you here, Sir?" Robin asked

"Why do you always call me Sir?" For a man elected on an anti-elitist platform, he was always confused on why a kid, especially an American, would refer to him as High-Class.

"There is a British man who I would rather not disappoint with what he could consider my rude behavior."

"That might have told me too much, I may soon be able to find out your secret identity kid." Yeah right. "Either way Mal I need to talk with you and Dinah about the Enrea crisis."

"Sure." Mal said as they walked into a corner. Mal was the team's designated info guy. He was so good that he even got to do it for some of the League's stuff.

"*CLICK*," Robin looked over and saw Rocket and Noble kissing, taking a photo, with the earth in the background. "Now how do you like that babe." Noble said

"Like it, I love it," Rocket said as they kissed once again.

"Guys we have an announcement!" Noble said as they all looked at the couple.

"I'm pregnant!" Rocket said

"OH MY GOD" Black Canary said. Zatanna then looks at him with a 'how did you know?' look.

"Congratulations, for how long?" Zatanna and M'gann said in sync.

"Have you picked out a name?" Steward asked.

"For about two months and Amistad," Rocket replied.

"Cool name," Robin said. "So I assume you're taking a break from the team under a doctor's recommendation or something?"

"Probably, but I'm not sure when?"

"Do we give Maternity and Paternity leave?" Everybody pondered that for a second. For some of the people here this was a full time job with benefits. So the maternity/paternity package was a good question.

"I'll be back. Yo, where is the bathroom?" This guy didn't think to go to the bathroom before space and his girlfriend's pregnancy announcement.

"Take that hallway and it's the third door on your left," Black Canary said. Noble started to walk in that direction

"Should you really let a civilian walk around your HQ?," Robin asked

"Oh please, Batman doesn't watch people when they go to the bathroom in the Batcave."

Robin then proceeded to give a look that showed that he knew that wasn't true and then proceeded to look away.

"He doesn't right?," Black Canary asked in a panic. She saw the lack of response and fell into silence.

"What is the Batcave like?," Tula asked. Very few people had actually seen the Batcave. Even many members of the Justice League had not seen the cave. They knew it existed, but little about what's in it. Some people who had asked him about it thought it was a weapons bunker and torture chamber. Well... it had both of those things but they probably did not expect the giant dinosaur to be there.

"Can't say," everyone started to look at him. "What! Batman's orders."

"Well, we can't say that we are surprised. I mean if Superman did that with his Fortress of Solitude I would be surprised."

"Well Superman did tell me not to say anything about what's in his fortress?," then he realized that he had said too much.

"WAIT," Rocket yelled. Everybody was now looking at him. He should definitely not have said that. "YOU have been to the Fortress of Solitude."

"Seriously! I have way more experience than you and even I haven't been there," Zatanna said.

"Is it in the ocean?" Aquagirl said. "If it is I think Garth and I could find it?"

"Is it like really cool, or are we setting our expectations too high," Karen asked.

"Ummmmm..." He really did not know how to respond to that last question. It was... weird. Just everything seemed like a one-shot adventure Superman went on, while everything in the Batcave has defined Batman ever since he put it there. He personally liked the later.

"Wait? Where's Noble?" Rocket asked.

"I'll go check on him," Robin said, sprinting away. At least I can now get out of this conversation before I anger Superman anymore, he was still pissed off about me setting up a zeta-Tube in his parent's house. If I'm lucky they'll ask Superman instead of me. He then started to sprint down the hall. When he reached the men's bathroom he decided to enter. "Yo Noble your-" When he entered he saw Noble bleeding clothes ripped up and Ravager above him holding a sword. "-baby momma..."

Robin saw Ravager charge at him and he jumped backwards. Ravager did not come through the door, rather he came through the wall the force and parts of the concrete hit Robin forcing him to the other wall. He jumped to the left as Ravager kept charging at him, hitting the wall crashing into what appeared to be a storage room on the other side of the room. "What brings you here Ravager? Revenge for what Batman and I did to you and your daddy," Robin taunted.

"I don't need to do anything that petty," He responded with bravado.

"Well if you brought your sister I would-"

"FUCK YOU." With that he charged at Robin through a wall and into the what appeared to be a conference room. Slade's enhancements of his own son seemed to be useful. Robin jumped onto the table, Ravager overturned it causing Robin to jump into the air which followed with an explosive batarang to the face. He was enhanced with both superhuman strength and superhuman durability so he would probably be fine.

"What the hell!" Black Canary said. Ravager then got up and grabbed Robin before throwing him into the hole between the conference room and the hall way.

"Ow," Robin said. He looked up and instantly jumped to the side as he saw Rocket come towards him.

"UHHHHH," Rocket said. "Robin, who is this guy?"

"Grant Wilson, Deathstroke's sidekick." They heard a bunch of explosions come from the conference room.

"Seriously. That guy has a sidekick!" then Robin shrugged. "Wait where's Noble?!" she said in panic. Robin then looked over the side of the Bathroom where Ravager jumped out of. "No," she then panicked and went into the bathroom. There she saw Noble, "NOBLE."

He saw her crying and came over and put his hand on her shoulder. "Take him." Robin said as she looked at him. "We got this, get him help." She then picked him up and ran towards the Zeta Tube. Robin then went back to the conference room.

Robin saw small bits of fire, blood and explosions everywhere with Hawkman's mace being misplaced. "AHHHHHHHH," he heard from one of the corners. There he saw Ravager with Miss Martian, Zatanna, Garth, Tula, John Stewart, Black Canary, Mal, and Karen were holding him down to one side. He lunged with rage at Ravager with electric knuckles. He punched him in the stomach then grabbed him by the head and shoved him into a wall. Ravager almost looked out of it but Robin did not want to take any chances and beat him against the wall before attaching an explosive batarang on his back sending him 10 feet into the air before falling down and losing consciousness. Everybody got up and looked at Ravager's unconscious body and wanted answers.

"What happened?," Black Canary, slightly beat up, asked.

One Hour Later

Hawkman and Captain Atom came bay after Black Canary informed the League about the attack. Everybody was still in shock after what happened to Noble.

"We just got word from Rocket, Noble is going to be fine," everybody breathed a collective sigh of relief. "He is going to be in the hospital for a while, but he will be fine."

"Hcough HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA," they all heard a beat up Ravager laugh. "That's it isn't it. You're weakness. It your family. That's how I'll win. HAHAHAHHA-" Green Lantern gagged him.

"Why is he even here?" Green Lantern asked. Ravager started to look at the British Prime Minister.

"Uhhhh..." the PM said.

"Is he trying to kill you?" Black Canary asked.

"It appears so."

"I've checked the entire Watchtower it doesn't seem as though there is anyone else here. All footprints imply this was a one man job. I don't know how he got in here so we should pro-," Robin tried to continue before being cut off in his communicator.

"Robin." Batman said. "Get back to Gotham now I need your help."

"I'm on the Watchtower, I need-"

"You can sightsee another time."

"Sightsee?" Robin said with confusion. "Did you not get the League memo about the attack?" Then he heard an explosion in the background.

"Attack?... just get here if you can. Batman out," then the communications went out.

"sigh"

"Batman," Black Canary said, with the tone of expectations.

"Batman." Everybody knew what that meant. "I can st-"

"Go, you better not keep your boss waiting," Zatanna said.

Robin started to leave and walked down the hallway. As he walked down the hall he looked into the hole between the bathroom and the hall and wondered something, "How did he get in? And how did he know the Prime Minister was here?" He couldn't have known that the PM was here. That means he was after something else.

Instantly he noted something, the entrance from the vent was damaged. he jumped up and looked around the vent. On one side he saw some dirt on the vent. He decided to move in that direction. He eventually traversed the Watchtower's vent system for an hour. After a while he was confronted with something he did not expect. A robotic spider. He instantly caught the thing with his hand. What was this thing? It had some hexagons connected to form some sort of logo. He then used a small EMP to shutdown the robotic spider and put it away in his utility belt.

The scanners in his belt showed the device to be some sort of robot which used its legs as a data port.

Did Ravenger come here for espionage? There's no way that guy is an electronics expert, he must have been hired by someone. I wonder if anybody has seen this logo before.

"Tegrof ruo daeh sretrauq." He heard some gibberish and sought to check it out. Eventually he came across the vent outside the League's conference room. There he saw Zatanna and Miss Martian beside Ravager and the PM. Zatanna seemed to be performing some type of spell. To the further edge there was Garth, Tula, John Stewart, Black Canary, Hawkman, Captain Atom, Mal, and Karen.

"Do you think you can do it?," he heard Garth say.

"I don't know, we have only ever removed memories and inserted suggestions," Miss Martian said. What the hell! They are mind wiping super villains. What suggestions were they inserting.

"We know, but think about this. If we can rehabilitate him, we could do this to others," Mal said. Everybody looked at each other, somewhat uncomfortable with what they are doing.

"We should probably first change Prime Minister Scott's memories to follow his Secretary of State on the Enrea crisis. Just like Rhelasia and Santa Prisca," Miss Martian said.

Wait a second! THEY ARE BRAINWASHING WORLD LEADERS!

That's very undemocratic. A new world order where our leaders are just pawns of an elite super hero club. Isn't this what the light is trying to do?

"That's not the same thing as changing someone's personality." Zatanna said.

"But it could give him a second chance. To be free of his Father."

There was a long pause in the room.

"Alright let's try and make Grant Wilson a hero," Zatanna said. As she was about to perform magic a batarang came at her knocking her to the ground.

"WHAT THE HELL?" Robin yelled.

"RO-" he activated his flash bang and everybody could not see for a few seconds and when they could Robin and the unconscious Ravager were gone.

Ok a faction of the Justice League is brainwashing super villains. Seems pretty diabolical. Why did he try to save Ravager anyway?

 _Robin's Fantasy_

 _Rose Wilson and Robin look out a window seeing the members of the League haul away to a Belle Reve truck, while Ravager goes to Arkham Asylum._

 _"Robin you saved my brother from certain destruction." Rose said ash she pushed him onto a bed. "You even fought the Justice League for him. I don't think I can every repay you." She started to take off her shit. "But I can try..."_

 _Robin in Reality_

Well... better save this guy.

"Batman." He tapped his communicator. "Batman." They must have cut off communications from the Watchtower. Then he saw Miss Martian phase through the floor. He tried to pick up Ravager but then Miss Martian started levitating his body. Robin reacted by jumping to the side and throwing another flash bang. He had disappeared. This time without Ravager's body. "He's gone," Miss Martian said.

He ran into the storage facility. He tried to find some communications equipment but anything here was too alien to him. Literally.

Ok I've got no communications, no way out, and I'm out numbered eight supers and two interns to one. Hawkman and Captain Atom ran into the storage facility to track him. He was hiding above the shelves but could echo his voice to talk to them.

"Listen to us kid. You have no idea what you saw and if you understand you would do it too," Captain Atom said.

"You sound like I just walked in on my parents having sex." When Captain Atom and Hawkman came charging at him he used Per Degaton's staff to freeze them in time. After they were both hit and they were frozen in time. Then he got hit from the side. Then somebody grabbed his cape. He dropped the staff and saw Tula, Tempest and Black Canary. He cut off his cape from the rest of his costume with a batarang. He then hid behind some of the shelves in the storage facility.

"So you all are looking to brainwash super villains now? Don't remember that in the Teams handbook," Black Canary looks behind the shelf and sees no one.

"Listen, Robin. We can talk this out. You see we needed to make sure that no villain knew anything about our Watchtower," Black Canary replied.

"Bullshit, why was Noble on the place then? If you cared about security you would consider everyone who is not an agent to be a threat," he said with profound disappointment. "And why then would you try to force the PM to make decisions you want him to."

"Robin we could fix Grant," Tempest said as a bond villain trying to recruit me. "He is a poor, unlucky kid. His father manipulated him, were trying to help him have a better future. Like the one Batman gave you." There was a silence for a while after that.

"Do you seriously think that brain washing and child adoption are morally equal? And still ignoring the PM question."

"Robin, these people need help," Aquagirl said with a helicopter mom's tone. "We can make him a better member of society."

"Then why not do this to Oceanmaster, make him a great Atlantian price again?" Jason replied. Then an awkward silence followed. "My god you do want to do this to Oceanmaster." Oceanmaster had gone underground since Aquaman discovered his identity.

The three heroes thought that they had surrounded him they all jumped him at once. Then they all just went through him and they realized that it was a hologram.

Robin had left the room soon after the three had entered it. He was already at the Zeta Tube when he was engulfed by a green hand. "LANTERN," he yelled.

"Sorry kid but I create anti-flash glasses with my ring so don't even bother tryin-" then all he could hear was a loud screech. A sonic bomb will leave him temporally paralyzed but could not last long. Robin ran over to the console and saw that he could not input to the Batcave, probably had to do with the fact that he did not have security access to the Watchtower. Had to hack and go with the phone booth in Gotham (he had pre-built settings that would allow anyone he wanted to use that one). When he was about to run into the Zeta-Tube, Miss Martian appeared. Then he heard a loud smash behind him.

He threw a batarang that was avoided. Hawkman had broken his sonic device. Then he was encircled by the eight with Mal and Karen looking off to the side.

"Ok what are you going to do?," Robin asked.

"We are not going to hurt you?," Zatanna tried to reassure him

"No you are just going to brainwash me," he responded with great disappointment in his voice. "That is some social engineering right there."

"You have no idea what-," Hawkman tried to say.

"I get the gist. You guys mind wipe people and reprogram them to your will. That's what you did with the PM, and what you were trying to do with Grant"

"Well they are mainly idea planting in super villains or important people who just needed guidance," Garth argued.

"Mainly?" Robin asked. They all responded with awkward silence. "What are you guys doing?" he said in disappointment.

"Listen kid you have no idea what you are talking about. Now get out of the way and let the adults do the work," Captain Atom declared. "Do you remember the Secret Society swapped bodies with the Justice League?"

"Yeah," Robin remembered when that happened. He was still a street orphan but the anti-Justice League riots that occurred when they were seen robbing banks and museums allowed him to steal a few thousand bucks from Falcone. Then it came out that Reverse Flash, Wizard, and some other villains had swapped bodies with the Justice League. That excuse never held up well with the public, and it's why we have Godfrey .

"Well do you think that they never looked under the mask?" Ok... well they were not complete idiots... maybe the guy who called himself the Floronic Man. "That is when we first started removing the memories of our adversaries to protect our secret identities."

"That seems reasonable, and I assume it was only you guys who have done this?" If I can get them to rat out anyone else before I escape I will be on better footing to convince the rest of the League about this.

"No one, we do this all together or not at all." Well that was easy.

"Then what were you guys saying about making the Prime Minister of England subservient to your demands."

"We were not enslaving him, the league cannot divulge classified information about our adversaries. So we have him make the decision he would have made if he knew about the situation," Miss Martian told him.

"And you make that judgment. So you are now a Cabal that can influence world policy at will. That's why he got the private Zeta tube." he said critically.

"That's not tru-" she was cut off.

"No it is true. What have you made him do?" he asked not expecting a the full truth but a series of bad truth's to conceal a bigger one.

"We had him modify superhuman control legislation," Captain Atom said. "We also had him vote for UN resolutions against Queen Bee joining." Ok, the former was controversial in the UK, a few authoritarian regimes strictly monitor superhumans, but they mainly follow political adversaries. The later was a surprise because even the Americans thought it was a good idea to let them in.

"And what else the Libyan intervention?" did the Light have something to do with the Gaddafi regime.

"No that's not necessary to the Light," Zatanna said.

"The Enrea crisis?" Enrea was a country on the Red sea across from Bialyia on the southern Arabian Peninsula. It was currently in a civil war when its interior and northern providences almost seceded. Since then the war has produced 3 million refugees (generously supported by the Wayne and Kord Foundations) and nearly 200,000 dead, one million refugees.

"Nothing," Mal blurted. The guy was clearly lying. He paused for a second.

"Did you guys start the crisis?" It had clearly been a problem for Queen Bee, but would they start a civil war to stop her?

There was a loud silence followed by his question

"My god!" he exclaimed.

"You don't-" Black Canary tried to say.

"No I DO UNDERSTAND. This is what the entire world has feared since the founding of the Justice Society and its expansion into the All Star Squadron. That a group of us, heroes, would get behind closed doors and decide the fate of the world. That's why Godfrey has been on our asses for so long." Batman will rub this incident in his face. All because of The Babel protocols. So Batman was right about needing those after all? "I understand why each of you would think to this." This statement surprised the entire room since they thought for sure he would not have approved.

"Karen and Mal are probably most paranoid about not having super villains know who they are, one probably figured out your identities in the first place and then you guys joined this group." The two of them then gave facial expressions showing he was right.

"Black Canary and Zatanna's moms were both killed by super villains thus they know the purpose of a secret identity." The two of them looked saddened by the mention of their parents.

"Captain Atom, Hawkman, and Green Lantern are all ex-military. Specifically they fought wars because their leaders did not take threats such as communism, terrorism, and intergalactic imperialism seriously until it was too late." The three of them looked at him as though it were an insult.

"Tula and Garth both want to 'fix' their former boss Oceanmaster." They actually kept their faced calmed.

"But you-" he said pointing to Miss Martian, "-I have no idea why you would do this."

"Garfield." That makes sense now. Garfield's identity was known and his mom paid a price.

"Still doesn't justify brainwashing. I think Ms. Logan would have agreed with me." She did not like him mentioning Garfield's mom.

"Listen Robin you can lose your memories or you can join us."

"Neither," Robin said as he fired his grappling hook at Miss Martian. She dodged it but it latched onto the size of the Zeta-Tube.

"What did you expect to accomplish with that?" She asked

"This." Then the batarang he had thrown at Hawkman exploded taking the window out as well.

Suddenly everybody was pulled back into space. Captain Atom and Miss Martian tried to grab and fly everyone else but could neither pick them up or fly away from the vacuum.

Green Lantern puts up a barrier around where the air is escaping. Everybody hit the ground hard as the vacuum was disconnected from the room. As everybody recovers Robin runs to the Zeta-Tube. As he gets in Miss Martian starts invading his mind. "Robin." He heard her voice in his head. "Forget" then all of a sudden his memories started making less and less sense she was peeling away his memories. But he was strong he was able to resist temporarily.

 **"Designation B13, Robin."**

Then all of a sudden it wasn't just his memories that seemed as if they were slipping everything was. What the hell. Then darkness shrouded him. He could not see anything but his own body and even then it wasn't moving on his command. What was happening to him. His body started to smash something. He couldn't tell what because of the darkness, just the action of what his hand was doing.

 **GOTHAM CITY**

 _Third Person Narrator_

Robin exited the phone booth after tearing up the wires inside. But he did not do this out of his own will. Rather the psychic blast had rendered him into a sort of defacto state. Unable to make many words or do anything but a limp sort of walking. He traveled to find somewhere or somebody that he would consider a save space.

"Batman," he said.

As he limped across the empty streets of Gotham. So did a great evil that was about to take interest in him. It saw him from a far and could not believe it. _OF COURSE I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. THE ULTIMATE WAY TO SCREW WITH BATS JUST APPEARED TO ME ON A SILVER PLATTER_.

As Robin limped down the street the evil tried to stand in its way. "Kid stop and-" but he just kept walking. "Hello." It waved its hand in front of Robin. "Bird boy, is there something wrong with you?" The evil attempts to pinch Robin, only to be thrown into the neighboring store. but just as he start's walking along he is hit with a hammer.

"Puddin are you alright."

 _Alight she asks. I'm orgasmic. Here is my greatest joke. Batman will never be able to forget this one._

"We need to take this to the rest."

"Why?"

"I need a big audience for my best work. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."


	5. The Message

Present

 **OUSIDE THEMYSCIRAN EMBASSY**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

Outside the Themysciran Embassy looks like your typical building from a Greek ruins. All white, pillars to hold it up, giant stairs before you enter, statues of gods and goddesses everywhere for people to pray on. But that's not what he was here for. Of course little is actually known about the island to the public. They know only women and something about paganism and that the first and second (they think there are two) Wonder Women came from there. Most people don't even know that Washington has the only Themysciran Embassy in the world. The staff there is about 200 including ambassador Diana and her protégé Wonder Girl. Troia also used to live there.

"Do you have video footage on the embassy?" Arkham Knight asked.

"Yes," Oracle responded. "So this lass-us-ra goo is bellow the dining room right. Well you have 100 super soldier amazons there and the offices outside that you have to go through."

"Lazarus. Except I won't Wonder Woman will for me."

"Sureeee... and how will you get the Mad Hatter Equipment on her tiara."

"Simple I'm going to sneak into her room and replace it."

"Pervert," she declared. "I bet that's why you did this last time."

"Last time I was trying to get into Troia's bedroom," he corrected then instantly regretted.

"Oh so it is not Wonder Woman you want to jack to bu-," she said extremely passive aggressively.

"Can we focus on the mission?" Jason declared, really wanting this conversation to be over.

"Fine." She said still clearly mad about what he had said. "The only heroes in the DC area now are Captain Marvel and Captain Atom. They will be alerted as soon as Wonder Woman clears the embassy. Oracle out."

Arkham Knight got to work bringing a duffle bag that had the mutilated Savage in it. The laser sensors in the embassy's outside were the easiest to dodge. He could have gotten through this part when he was 8. Now came the hard part.

Magic. The magic based traps should be a problem for him. He had absolutely no idea what any of these traps did. Turn him into a frog, light him on fire, castrate him? (Troia was too convincing when she threatened him like that) Luckily he still had his trusty N-th metal knife. Metal that can damage almost any magical force. So long as Dr. Fate was not here he should be able to skip through. As he made it down the hallway he made it down the hallway. He went past Troia's former room. He wondered why she left? It was too late after he died for that to be it. But he did not have time to wonder. He had a mission to do. He opened the door with a paper clip, something he learned when he was 10. As he snuck in he saw that Wonder Woman was having a shower. This was good. He placed the device on the fake tiara and left with the real one.

He made his way to the dining hall. Keeping to the shadows on the floor above. He decided to start the assault now by throwing a grenade into the room and setting off the explosives he placed around the Embassy.

 _Wonder Woman POV_

"BOOOOOOOM." An explosion came out of my bedroom.

Great Hera!

Wonder Woman heard the explosion and instantly got to work. Realizing that it came from the dining room she dashed there immediately.

There she saw dozens of villains. Cheetah, Circe, Ares, Blockbuster, Solomon Grundy, Luther, Cheshire, and many more. Instantly she got to work dispatching them.

Cheetah was the first one she went after, their long adversarial relationship could only be matched by Clark and Lex Luthor and Bruce and Joker... well Clark and I never killed Luthor or Cheetah. She punched Cheetah through a wall and she seemed to go down instantly. She would have gloated more if she did not think that Circe was about to cast a spell against her.

Blockbuster and Grundy started to panic and go outside. There was no way I was going to let them escape. But after going outside I could not believe what I saw. The entire city was dominated by Nazi imagery.

This had to be a sick joke.

Yet when she looked into the air she saw him.

"Per Degaton," she yelled at him. "I vanquished you from this world twice and I will do it again."

 _Captain Marvel POV_

"Per Degaton. I vanquished you from this world twice and I will do it again."

I instantly looked around. I thought that we had vanquished Per Degaton after his attack a few years ago. but when I looked around there was nobody there. I was not the best history student, but I would remember that the guy who led Hitler's superhuman army against the All-Star Squadron did not have invisibility so we were not facing another invisible man. Then something hit me from behind.

I looked back and only saw Wonder Woman. She then charged at me. I thought whatever hit me was behind me so I looked back again only to be hit from behind again. Then I realized that it was Wonder Woman who was attacking me.

"You were vanquished by the All Star Squadron and the Justice League Per Degaton. But I am all that is necessary to stop you."

Ok. SHE THINKS I AM A NAZI. It's really hard to top the "You are a Nazi" insult and the fact that the world's greatest heroine was throwing that at me really hurts my pride.

"UHH," Wonder woman punched me in the stomach. And then in my face.

Captain Marvel tried to grab both of her hands to restrain her, but she easily broke free sending him towards a building. He stopped before hitting the building but could not regain focus until Wonder Woman hit him through that building. He lied on the rubble when he saw Wonder Woman charge at him again. The something hit her from the side displacing her about a block.

"Need help kid," he recognized the voice immediately.

"CAPTAIN ATOM," Billy said in shock. "Aren't you supposed to be in lockdown because of the protests."

"I broke the rules for this since it was an-" he was cut off because Wonder Woman charged at him.

"MASTERMAN, I knew Per Degaton didn't come-," she was hit by Captain Marvel into the Themysciran Embassy.

"Thanks. Masterman? Per Degaton?"

"She is seeing us both as nazis," Billy replied. "This is going to be fun." Then the world's most powerful heroine came at them again. Captain Atom tried to deflect but instead he was punched into Captain Marvel then both of them into a building. When he hit the ground he saw everybody looking at him and Captain Atom.

"Everybody get-" he tried to say before being interrupted by a screaming bystander.

"ITS CAPTAIN CANCER RUN," everybody started to panic out of the street. Well at least they are gone. Bad news, they are all afraid of Captain Atom.

They both saw Wonder Woman above them charging. They both dodged in opposite directions and Wonder Woman hit where they were expanding the crater there. Yeah. This is going to be fun.

 _Arkham Knight POV_

This is going even better than I thought. Wonder Woman had gone outside after dispatching everyone in the room. The grenade had blown a hole in the floor revealing a cavern bellow.

"Arkham Knight," Oracle told him. "Captain Marvel and Captain Atom are engaging Wonder Woman now."

"Good I need 15 minutes to get him into the Pit then restrain him and get him out of here," he replied.

Arkham Knight jumped into the hole in the floor. and proceeded down a long hallway. At the end of it he saw his goal. A Lazarus Pit!

He opened the duffle bag and grabbed the gagged Savage by the head. Savage looked at him with interest before he threw him into the pit. Savage sunk in and some bubbles appeared before they stopped.

Did it not work?

...

...

...

Then Savage appeared out of the pit grabbing for air. "AHHHHHHHH" he screamed. He looked at him but it seemed as though he would have done that in any direction. He charged at him but Arkham Knight pulled out his gun and shot at him with his stun bullet. He went down instantly.

That was easy. "Oracle I'm done."

"Really," she said surprised. "Thought it would be harder."

"It will be soon."

"Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are still fighting aannnndddd they just crashed through the Enrean embassy."

"Well... when I am in the clear blow up the device."

"What?" she asked very surprised.

"Use the self destruct button," an awkward silence followed. "Well, better wish Billy good luck."

A few hours later

 **LOCATION UNKOWN**

 _Savage POV_

Savage woke up confused an dazed. What had happened? where was he and why was he tied to the chains. He would love to have a talk with his torturer, but he had to attend a Light meeting soon.

"Whoever you are, get this over with quickly?"

"Why would I do that?" The Batman Doppelganger said.

"Oh you." He said with disappointment. He was expecting something better than a Batman wannabe. "Well get this over with?"

"What you have something better to do?"

"I have lived for centuries. You think there is any torture that you can do to me that I do not know about."

"This." As he was injected with a syringe with some yellow liquid.

"HA no poison can work ..." Demons started to appear everywhere "...on me." he started to panic. This had never happened before. "WWWHAT-What-What is this?" he asked in fear.

"Your body used to be immortal Mr. Savage. One Lazarus dump later your metagene has been deactivated." He said victoriously to Savage.

"Bullshit, this is an illusion," Savage triumphantly declared.

"Denial, huh... I can fix that," he then moved towards him with. He then put his knife to Savage's throat. "You will tell me everything."

Three Days Later

 **HALL OF JUSTICE**

 _Green Arrow POV_

Well this was going to be fun. "Alright rather than give a pre written statement I'm going to answer questions from each of you about what happened," Green Arrow said. Every reporter in the room instantly raised their hand. He then pointed to some guy in the front.

"James Byran, New York Times. Why was Wonder Woman attacking innocent civilians?

"She has her tiara replaced with mind manipulating hardware that made her see anyone before have the appearance of an array of super villains." He then pointed to a reporter on the side.

"Amy Wisen, Washington Post. Why didn't the league respond faster to this fight? You had at least 5 hours to send more people."

"Everybody who was available arrived as soon as possible. The fight took a long time due to the fact that we ended up fighting her one after the other, rather simultaneously due to difficulties fighting flight based super-humans, and the large battle radius." He pointed into the back.

"Cat Grant, Daily Planet. How do we know that you deployed everyone available? Or that you kept damage to a minimum? Would the League be willing to submit itself to an audit."

"The League uses the best super-humans and methods available. Using these we have been able to save the world several times over. There are many people who are alive because of the League. We keep identities secret because of the publicity of how targeted we are so we cannot publically disclose any to possibly audit. Yet many Americans are ok with that. Goodbye."

"You didn't answer my question," she said. Every other journalist started yelling questions at Green Arrow.

He headed down a hall into the library, which had been closed down today to civilians. There he saw Wonder Woman in the hallway.

"Sorry about having to make you go through that," she said.

"Don't worry about it, at least you didn't give me the Captain Atom punch." He said mockingly before realizing that made her sad.

"I should have done this."

"No, you do not do well in front of the camera Diana. Do you not remember the Lois Lane interview?" They both laughed at that one.

"Ok, fair point." She responded.

"Any leads yet on whose responsible for this."

"Nope, Batman believes for this technology to be the work of one of his villains, the Mad Hatter, but according to him this doesn't fit hatter's profile, something about only blondes."

"Alright..." Arrow understood that urge but was confused on Mad Hatter's interpretation. "Well do we have any idea what this was for?"

"They were trying to get bellow the Themysciran Embassy."

"Bellow it? What's there?"

"A Lazarus Pit."

"As in those thing's Ra's al Ghul uses?

"Yep."

"So is the Light behind it?"

"Batman said that was the most likely amongst a bunch of unlikely."

"Okayyy... meaning?" She shrugged. He looked up and noticed something. "Why are you not wearing your tiara?" It was a staple of her costume, without it the whole thing looked off."

"Oh, I think who did this also took it."

"Why?"

"Who knows?"

"Well I'm sure-" as they walked into the library they saw someone in the chair "-it will show up?" he said as they realized that the body in the center was wearing it.

Instantly the two of them recognized the body. It was Vandal Savage. Then they saw his blood on the wall with a message.

"THIS IS FOR BLUE BEETLE AND KID FLASH. ROBIN COMES NEXT."

Twelve Hours Later

 _Nightwing POV_

Honestly being a full time member of the team or being a part-time member of the team doesn't seem to master since the last thing you ever expect to happen seems to be the next thing to happen. So I took a lighter job after what happened with the Reach. Sue me.

Well I never expected this to happen. An immortal has died. This is like the drowning in air. It should just not be possible. Yet here I am looking impossible once again in the face. He took out a device to scan Savage's body. "Tell me everything." Green Arrow, Captain Atom, Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Black Lightning, and Superboy were there.

"We walked in and found him like this," Wonder Woman said.

"Well he certainly was moved here," Nightwing declared. "Nails removed, major limbs broken in multiple spots, his eyes and ears were damaged by light-flashing and loud sounds, organs removed non-surgically. Scarecrow fear toxin?" that last one intrigued him. "He was tortured. Definitely could not do this in public, the body was smuggled in, probably as a message." Everybody in the room shivered at Nightwing's description of what happened.

"We also checked every single entrance into these rooms, whoever snuck in here and how they did it is still unknown at this point," Green Arrow said. Nightwing then noticed something. Ash, a green ash like only one in the world.

"What's that?" Green Arrow asked him.

"Ash. From the Lazarus Pit."

"What are you suggesting?" Black Lighting asked.

"That he used a Lazarus pit before his death. This ash would stay on him for at least a month after use."

"Could this have something to do with the embassy attack?" Wonder Woman asked, "The pit there was destroyed though, so Batman told me that he thought Ra's wanted to keep his monopoly on his control of the pits."

"That wouldn't explain why Savage is dead unless..." he paused, not taking his own thought seriously.

"Unless what?"

"Unless Ra's killed him after he used the Pit. The Pit being what stripped him of his powers," everybody in the room then started to stare at each other.

"Are you suggesting our enemies are starting to kill each other," Superboy said in shock.

"Maybe." Nightwing then started to stare up at the message in blood. "Maybe not... for Blue Beetle and Kid Flash... whoever did this clearly never believed in the Light."

"Why does avenging Ted and Wally mean that that the Light didn't do this? Could they just be trying to throw us off?" Black Canary asked.

"Because all current members of the Light were in agreement to kill Blue Beetle, you cannot avenge somebody you killed. And this doesn't make much sense for a distraction. There isn't really any succession plan within the Light, we learned that after what happened to Oceanmaster. This is going to cause the members of the organization to fight amongst themselves for turf. Somebody else did this."

"What about the other part of the message?" Captain Atom asked. "Robin comes next? What could that possibly mean?" Black Canary looked over to Captain Atom in concern. They were with him before the Joker incident. Maybe they think it has to do with Ravager's attack?

"I don't know. Wait! Who knows how Blue Beetle and Kid Flash died outside the League and the Light?" he said in revelation. As much of the Light was kept secret as possible: even the death of their comrades, most people didn't know because of Jaime and Bart's subsequent adoption of their identities. But who could have known about their deaths?

This sent shockwaves through the rest of the League and team members as they realized another enemy must have as much information as the Light. Who could it be? What would they want?

"On top of that how can you avenge Robin, Joker was... Joker is dead." Nightwing reminded them. They all looked down at the ground in awkwardness, except for Black Canary and Captain Atom. They all refused to say (me as well) it publically but it was the most logical thing that happened to Joker. The body was found beaten to death by a metal object a few weeks after what happened to the kid. Batman was also rarely accounted for amongst the League and even Alfred during that time and he has never accepted or denied it.

"Well what should we do with Savage?" Superboy asked.

"Given our current PR problem of us being unable to protect anyone and actively destroying diplomatic compounds and giving out cancer. Probably tell them we cannot secure our own buildings," Nightwing stated.

"That sounds counter intuitive," Captain Atom said.

"The truth will always come out. Always."

"BEEEEEP" Batman then appeared on a screen.

"All Leaguer's meet in the conference room immediately. It is time to start the judgment of Captain Atom," Batman declared. They all looked at him in dispair, but its part of the job.

 **THE TOWER, LOS ANGELES**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

The tower is a five floor former prison and office building on an island outside Los Angeles. Was shutdown in 1978 over electricity issues, finding Jones Act ships (stupid government regulations), and a bad prison guard scandal involving turning some wings into a brothel.

Was remolded as a office building for Kord industries but didn't attract anyone and was shut down. Luckily I own Kord Industries and have been using this place as a HQ ever since. Had a one way Zeta-Tube set bellow his and Oracle's apartment building in LA outside campus. She was a post grad trying to get a doctorate in Computer Science, he was freshman trying to get a Business degree. Same first names but she changed hers to Cutter for a fake id and I changed mine to Beaurox. Since I haven't raised Batman's suspicion with my Jason Beaurox identity, it's probably safe for now.

He pressed a button which sunk his helmet into the neck portion of his armor like a hoodie.

"ORACLE," he declared with the 1950s sitcom sentiment he wanted her to think about. "I'm home."

"Oh please don't use my work name, I cannot take the idea that my work interfering with my responsibility of keeping your house clean and cooking your dinner," Oracle responded as a sarcastic 50s housewife.

"Ohhhh I got you food on the way here," he showed her some Chinese food.

"GASP," she said with fake shock. "Thank you dear. You have lessened my sole responsibility because what else are women good for." They had started this husband-wife joke because... He honestly isn't sure why they started it. She grabbed the food and walked over the kitchen. "I set up a marathon video for us: HIVE HQ, JL fighting patterns, and some puppy videos."

"OOOhh and some Japanese hentai la-" She then threw a book at his head. He caught it of course but it changed the tone of the room. He put his armor in the display case. The technology was attached to bracelets on his wrists so it can automatically attach to him via magnetic waves. When he wanted to take it off he inputs a code into the display case and the glass door opened allowing the armor to fly into the case.

"Ok I deserved that," he said half heartedly. "Anything from Darhk's ship."

"No," she said defeated as she stuffed food in her mouth. "We have searched for months but we are no closer to figuring out his plan than we are now. The video footage is just an extension of what we know they do in North America but if you can find anything tell me."

"Pessimism won't help us."

"Neither will optimism. I have searched for days and weeks and months and by now a year to find these guys and they just keep out smarting me on their top secrets."

"Us," he reminded her. "They out smart us. And we did find one more entrance to that FOB in Metropolis. That's not a complete loss."

"Still. HIVE's NEOHUMANS can now go toe-to-toe with the heavy hitters in the Justice League." She pulled up video footage from the HIVE security camera at the New Orleans FOB. "If we don't do anything soon, they could get too powerful."

"Listen." Jason said. "I just killed an 50,000 year old immortal. A mere 2 century one should be a piece of cake." She looked relieved after his dark humor and bragging tone and started to laugh a little. They both sat down on their couch in front of a movie theater size projector TV.

"Still confused on why you went after this guy."

"Simple if I am going to torment a decent portion of the Justice League, I want the Light on the defensive while I do it. They will probably look at Savage's death, have a few quarrels and make up, but I have at least a few months to execute my plans."

"And you are going to balance fighting HIVE."

"Well, mom wants me to fight them in exchange for cash."

"When am I going to meet your 'mom' Jason?"

"I have a feeling you already have."

"What! Is she watching me right now?" He didn't respond to that which left her in a somewhat petrified state. "Well... do you want to watch the downfall of Captain Atom."

"Oooohhhhhh is it on tonight," he said with child like enthusiasm.

"It is coming on right now, as if you didn't already know that." He did plan for months for Captain Atom's downfall to happen today. She then pulled popcorn from under her desk as Arkham Knight sat on their couch.

"Thank you Felicity Smoak." Then her computer showed the Justice League at their conference table on the projector. With Captain Atom at one end and Batman at the other.

"Under the League Charter we are obligated to remove any precieved public threats from the League. Now it is time to consider whether to banish Captain Atom from society," Batman said on the screen.


	6. The Fall of Captain Atom

**THE WATCHTOWER**

 _Captain Atom POV_

"Captain Atom, we have to send you into exile," Batman said. The vote was unanimous. They all agreed that they had to bow to public opinion on this one.

I knew this was coming, but it still hurt. All I wanted to do was to be a hero. To get the parades and be thought of as a role model. Now I am a monster.

Eight Weeks Before Present

 **HUB CITY**

Major Force was at it again. This time he was robbing a bank. Something about revenge against China for the Vietnam and Korean wars. Though the bank was a Russian company. Rationalize that however you want.

"Prepare to go down Captain Atom," Major Force said as he charged at him. Captain Atom easily deflected him an threw him into the river.

"At least you show your true colors now Major Force," Captain Atom replied. He had always known about Major Force's malevolent behavior, but bound by classification he was required to keep any knowledge about Major Force's past to himself.

"UHHHH, I'm the hero this country needs," Force appeared from the river firing an energy bolt at a building. Captain Atom immediately swept in saving the civilian underneath where the building was collapsing onto. He dropped off what appeared to be a college student to the side.

"Go on, I have to get back to work," he said cheerfully.

 _Jason Todd POV_

"A true hero would never put the good natured in danger," he heard Captain Atom say.

HIPPOCRITE.

That might be why my revenge will be so sweet. They attempted to get rid of a perceived threat to humanity and created me to get rid of a real threat to humanity. In their own hubris they create their own destroyer.

He looked to where Captain Atom dropped off that college student. She began running away from the fight between Captain Atom and Major Force. He ran in the same direction.

It seemed as though he had run past her, in reality he had stolen her wallet. He did not need the money just some ID.

James Taylor huh. Sorry for bringing you into this but I can make it good in the end. Money can buy them what they want but not my revenge. And my revenge will be a cold sweet dessert.

Seven Weeks Before Present

 **DR. THOMAS ELLIOT'S OFFICE**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

"You want me to do what!" Dr. Elliot said.

"I want you to tell a healthy man that he has cancer," Arkham Knight replied this was the third (and most interesting) doctor he had asked.

"I heard you correct after all." He looked at his work as he said his next statement. "Get out."

"I can make it worth your while."

"I am one of the most successful doctors in the world. I'm not taking orders from some Batman lookalike. There is nothing money can buy me. What I want it you could-"

"You mean you want punish Bruce Wayne."

This statement shocked him. "How could you possibly know that?"

"I have training from the best, 'Hush,' when I heard rumors in the underworld about you I eventually tracked you down." Better thank mom for that.

"Ok. But what can you have for me that I don't already know."

"His greatest secret."

"Which is what?"

"Bruce Wayne is Batman."

Initially Thomas Elliot looked as though he did not believe him, then I said, "Can you prove it?"

I paused for a second. "A million times over."

"Then we have a deal Mr..."

"Arkham Knight, but if anyone asks, you have never met me and Joker told you before his unfortunate end. A last joke on Batman of sorts."

"I like you."

Six Weeks Before Present

 **CAPTAIN ATOMS OFFICE**

 _Captain Atom POV_

"This cannot be serious," Captain Atom said.

"I'm afraid it is," his secretary said also in non-belief. "Mom's against Radiation, it appears to have a suburban following that is growing in belief that you are spreading radiation to everything you touch."

"This is ridiculous I use Kinetic Energy not Radiation. Who the hell is funding this research into me?" He demanded.

"Nobody, there is no data into this. People just make up statistics and stories online and it seems to have a following through social media and social circles."

"Ok call a press conference I will respond-" he was cut off by his secretary.

"And then give these claims legitimacy. Come on, it's the internet, how bad could this get."

"Like the rumors that John is secretly an alien."

"Manhunter? Isn't he an alien."

"No Green Lantern John." To be fair to him I still run into that problem.

"Oh. Isn't he also an alien." Atom face palmed at his secretary's statement.

"NO. He was born in Detroit." This is why I should probably dispel these rumors.

"To be fair... that is an alien wasteland."

"Just prepare a conference in two weeks."

"But-"

"Do it."

Five Weeks Before Present

"I'm being sued!," Captain Atom exclaimed.

"Five people claim to have developed cancer after being saved by you," his lawyer told him.

"This is ridiculous there is no other evidence of this happening."

"Well we should be able to win this in court in a year."

"A year." He thought his lawyer was insane. "I can't be involved in a public litigation case for a year. This is a media nightmare."

"Well we could settle out of court quietly."

"Wouldn't we have to admit guilt?" He worried that this could increase accusations against him.

"Not necessarily," he looked around to see Batman in the window, his lawyer was far more shocked by the Dark Knight's presence. "It would just look bad."

"BATMAN," he exclaimed. I hate when he does that. "What are you here for?"

"I wanted to give you some info on your lawsuit." Captain Atom paid attention to this statement. "One of the doctors helping the plaintiffs is Dr. Thomas Elliot, one of the smartest doctors in the world. I would settling rather than go to trial since you would have to content with a man who has considerable backing from the medical community."

He thought for a second, before coming to his decision. "Alright but keep it as quiet as possible." He looked back and the window was closed with Batman nowhere to be seen.

"What about that press conference?" his secretary asked.

"Delay. Then merge it with a Justice League conference, say that's what it was originally supposed to be."

Four Weeks Before Present

 **UCLA FOOD COURT**

 _Jason Todd POV_

He saw Felicity at their normal spot outside the Taco Bell and next to the Chic-Fill-A. With nobody else there he had a quick frame to talk with her.

"Felicity you got anything on the Furious Five," Jason called the five people he got to sue Captain Atom, the Furious Five.

"Actually I have some emails you would probably like to see." On Felicity's computer the email of one of the five's showed an interesting subject line.

OUT OF COURT SETTLEMENT

"Can you leak this to CNN," Jason asked. When a conspiracy has a legitimate news source seemingly vindicate them it spreads like wildfire. 9/11 was Bush... Obama not born in America... Captain Atom causes cancer? If I can pull it off.

"Of course but why is a lawsuit your revenge against Captain Atom?" Felicity asked curiously.

"I thought you were the all seeing Oracle who could see and explain everything," He mocked. She gave a frowning face, "Just wait and see."

"Just wait and see what?" Roy asked. Harper was also a 17 year old freshman here. Of course his data was all faked by the Justice League to make up for his time on ice. He didn't know about my other life as Arkham Knight or my past as Robin, but I knew about his activities as Arsenal. He is a nice guy, absolutely lost, but nice guy.

"YouTube video, wanna watch," Jason responded.

"Later I got calc to study for. I'm just grabbing lunch then heading straight to the library."

"Well how about my excellent tutor Felicity help you with that." He then saw Felicity give him an evil eye. She was officially a tutor for him while they were battling HIVE and the Cabal. That's why they spent so much time together for the rest of the world.

"Thanks, but I would rather not be the third wheel in one of your bang sessions in her room." Arsenal then walked away and smirked. As he was walking away Felicity threw her drink at him, which he promptly dodged then ran away.

Three Weeks Before Present

 **CAPTAIN ATOM'S OFFICE**

 _Captain Atom POV_

"HOW DID THIS LEAK!" he screamed.

"One of the defendants emails were hacked and then released to major news outlets all over the world," his assistant said.

"We could sue for recklessness?" his lawyer told him.

"You think this is about money?" Captain Atom questioned. "This is about my reputation. I don't need a bunch of conspiracies questioning if I am a hero." He put his head in his arms and started to sob a little.

His assistant put his arm on Captain Atom's shoulder. "I mean how bad can this get." he said trying to be optimistic.

4 Hours Later

 **CHEESECAKE FACTORY, WASHINGTON DC**

"So they say you are causing cancer!" his son said.

"Yeah," he responded with all the enthusiasm of the Queen of England.

"Is it true?" My son is probably wondering if his wife is going through chemo because of his father.

"WHAT. NO. That's not how kinetic energy works." I am sick of having to explain the difference between radiation and kinetic energy. Damn the public education system. "Listen, I don't know what to do. I have had a campaign weighed against my public name before." He and his son looked down remembering his court marshal. "But I never had public protests against me." This felt dramatically different. "Just, feeling as though I have the entire world against me brings up bad memories and somehow makes it worse."

"Listen... dad, I-" his son was interrupted by Captain Atom's waist.

"BEEEP*BEEEP*BEEEP" his Justice League alarm was going off.

"SIGH" he rubbed his forehead.

"Work," his son responded with a understanding. "Well at least you can show the world that you help not hurt people."

"Yeah. Gotta go," he left money as he walked away.

"Relax dad I can pay."

"Don't bother. I don't go out often and spend time with my son. Let me pay." He then walks away putting on his scarf and beanie.

The restaurant was five blocks from the nearest zeta-tube. Most people assumed I didn't even have a secret identity. They were wrong, but at least I have a place to go when these protesters are screaming outside my building.

"-the Justice League has a potentially cancerous man walking amongst their mist. Think of the children that this man might have 'saved.'" Godfrey. Of course he was on this. Why did I stop to watch this guy.

UGHHH

Some guy just slammed into me. He just kept walking. Rude! Wait is he wearing an Arkham jacket? They made those?

"BEEP" his league reminder brought him back to reality.

He started to walk away when something exploded in his pocket.

He was instantly surrounded with green goo. What the hell is this! as he walked away he realized it was giving off electricity. It would have hurt anybody else but the metal absorbed it. He was starting to transform, into Captain Atom. Then when the metal skin surrounded his body he saw everybody looking at him.

"Listen calm-"

"ITS RADIO ACTIVE WASTE," somebody screamed.

"What no its not-" he tried to calm them down but everybody panicked instead.

Some guy came up behind him and hit him with a shovel. The shovel of course melted when it hit him.

"Listen sir." He picked him up. "It's not nice-" he was interrupted by a creaming crowd.

"LET GO OF HIM!" Somebody yelled at him as McDonalds and Burger King was being thrown at him.

The entire crowd then started getting in on it.

"GET IN A LED SUIT."

"GO BACK TO YOUR OWN PLANET."

"YOU BELONG IN A CELL."

Eventually he decided to fly away. He went into the clouds so that nobody could see where he would land.

Great now Atom-gate (completely original and has nothing to do with Ray Palmer) has an entire new dimension to it. I mean sure it is one crowd, but how can it end up.

Two Weeks Before Present

 **THE HALL OF JUSTICE**

"Captain Atom we have a image problem," the demonic, nightmare, bat told me. With all the high ground in the world to tell me that. "We do not need this," pointing to the screen.

There were protests in neighborhoods around the country. The suburban mom led anti-Captain Atom revolt had broken out in over 100 cities. The crowds were not large, but their appearance all over the country made it national news.

"Listen this is all a conspiracy," he replied.

"We know, but that doesn't solve our problem," Superman said. "We need to get these people to be able to trust us." His voice implied that this was about Godfrey.

"But-" he was immediately cut off.

"This is a PR problem." Batman declared. "Run everything by Snapper before you do anything that could make this worse." That was the ultimate punishment. To be placed below Snapper Carr. "Then in two weeks we hold a trial on your future."

"Oh come on it can't be that bad."

"JJ Abrams is making a horror film about you," Flash said.

"WHAT!" That took me by surprise.

"Apparently it's about a Gulf War soldier who sucks the life out of everyone around him when he comes into contact with a silver liquid that makes his skin extremely pale," Green Lantern (Hal) said. "Apparently LexCorp is backing it." LUTHOR. Should stuff that script up his- wait he isn't running LexCorp anymore.

"Now you see why it's a problem," Batman declared.

"Affirmative," he declared unenthusiastically. "You're ex is making my life miserable."

That last statement caused everyone to look at Batman. They all knew it was true.

"Listen Nathen," Superman told him. "The world knows you have only ever done good. You're a hero." As Superman says that a protester shows a "You are not my hero Captain Atom" sign. Around a burning at the stake of a effigy of myself.

"Yeah sure they do."

Three Days Before Present

This was a PR nightmare.

Wonder Woman, member of the Justice League, ambassador to man's world, worlds greatest heroine goes on a rampage destroying several diplomatic buildings and attacks anybody in her way. It took Captain Marvel, Captain Atom, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Rocket, and the Atom to stop her. Several hundred million in damages, insurance companies asking if they can refer to Wonder Woman as an act of god, and nothing but reporters for week. And every single one of the want to talk about HIM.

"You doing ok," he heard Wonder Woman ask.

"Sort of," Wonder woman can pack a punch. All these days later it still hurt his stomach whenever he tried to do anything.

"I'm asking about the protests not about your stomach."

That is what was hurting him too. He had served in several wars and saved the world a couple times over. Now he is being hunted in a witch hunt over a conspiracy. The protests had not died down they had multiplied. Every cancer patient in the country was somehow blaming him for their condition. The burning of Captain Atom merchandise (which he had never authorized) in the streets was common place. Though there was a counter protesters backing him, they spewed a lot of anti-capitalist, anti-semetic conspiracy theories. Something like the Jews want to stop him to allow their power companies to charge more since I was going to provide free electricity to the county. They were not helping me.

"It sucks," he said before leaving.

One Day Before Present

"Listen Randy-" his son cut him off.

"NO YOU LISTEN. Five people... and then your own daughter-in-law, who I am told only has six months left to live. You are responsible for this." his son yelled at him.

"No wait-"

"NEVER TALK TO ME AGAIN!" his son hung up the phone.

Captain Atom punched a wall in frustration.

This campaign against me just lost me my sons trust. He started to roll up in a ball and cry on the floor at the idea that his son and grandkids would blame him for his daughter-in-laws death.

Present

 **THE WATCHTOWER**

"Alright," he knew he needed to do this for the team. "What do you want me to do?

Batman started talking. "This is a private island that has no inhabitants. There is one zeta tube, you can be there or be on the Watchtower."

"Batman doesn't-" Rocket tried to interrupt.

"No the League's image has been under threat for some time by Godfrey, we need to cut any loose ends, even me." Captain Atom walked to a Zeta Tube with pride.

 **THE TOWER**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

"I WIN," he said with joy as his first victory was scored against the Cabal. "One down nine to go."

"Ok, you got him exiled, but was that really all you wanted," Felicity said somewhat confused.

"What I did more than that," he protested.

"Like what?" he then showed on the TV protest breaking out in dozens of cities with burning Captain Atom effigies. They were small, around 20 people each, but the media definitely enhanced them.

"He has been booted from the League in disgrace and not in front of the league but in the eyes of the country." He then looked through Wikipedia to see new accusations of Captain Atom causing cancer. He didn't set up these people to believe that they have cancer because of Captain Atom, but this would help him drag Captain Atom's name through the mud.

"Ok you have Godfrey attacking him but who else?"

"JJ Abrams."

"Ok I don't believe for a second you arranged for JJ Abrams to make a horror movie about Captain Atom going around giving people cancer."

"Well I didn't get Abrams but I got the funding for the movie." Gonna have to call Talia tonight.

"How!? Will this not be traced back to you?"

"I got somebody else to foot the bill."

"Then won't they wonder why this person is footing the bill for an anti-Justice League movie."

"Nah. Believe me they think she is a demon's daughter." She was wondering what my last statement meant. "Second, he is not martyred like Tula. That's a victory to me. The defeat of my enemy with none of the grace."

"Even if it's based on a lie. Specifically that his daughter-in-law has terminal cancer."

"Well when she 'miraculously survives' they will not thank him for that. Absent father, criminal past, and secrets kept from them since child hood, we both know how that ends up," she nodded at his observation, understanding that his son may never forgive Captain Atom. "Besides their whole hero career is based on a lie, or at least omission of fact on what happened to me, but it has had lasting consequences anyways." He said gleefully.


	7. Discovery

Two Weeks Later

 **RITZ CARLTON, SAUDI ARABIA**

 _Lex Luthor POV_

This was the only scenario he had never planned for. The death of an immortal. None of the other had considered this possibility either. This was sure to create more complications with their partner. As soon as the Justice League gave out the press conference everybody else thought the same thing and went to the chat.

Luthor was the first to log on.

Queen Bee next. Ra's followed. The Brain next. And Klarion-predictably-last.

"Well I expect to be surprised by you guys but Savage going off and dying was taking these to a new level. I don't think anything can surprise me anymore," Klarion started.

"While, I am sure we all share Klarion's shock. We should focus on how to respond to this new threat. Is this the result of the Justice League abandoning their no-kill policy," Queen Bee followed.

"Unlikely, the heroes have shown... resilience when it comes to their ethics," Brain followed.

"Actually I already have some information on what happened," Ra's stated. Well of course he would be the first to find such information. Ra's information network was well known as the best out of all of theirs. Hence why they took him most seriously. "It appears that one of my older adversaries has reappeared and removed his immortality via one of our Lazarus Pits. Then it appears that he was killed as some sort of warning message to the both the League and the Light."

"Who is this adversary?" Queen Bee implored.

"Damien Darhk."

"What has he done that made him so dangerous?"

"Well he helped make your country by starting World War 1."

"That was helpful indeed," Klarion said.

"Well, your adversary now appears to be our adversary Ra's," Luthor responded.

"I would rather deal with this... family issue myself," Ra's said.

Ra's al Ghul's family. It's not just the head that makes The Demon strong but the Spawn as well.

"Very well, till then I suggest that we invoke defensive protocals. All those in favor." Luthor said

"AYE." They agreed unanimously.

 **GOTHAM CITY**

 _Batman POV_

Batman swings from building to building when he notices something on his audio detector. Simple mugger, one woman has a purse. Guy probably thought I had something better to do. Boy were they wrong.

"Give up the-" the mugger tried to finish his statement before he saw Batman behind the woman, "-purse." Batman then narrowed his eyes. "AHHHHHHHHH." he panicked out of the alley. The woman turned around only to see nothing.

I love it when they do my work for me. The guy will probably be paranoid for a month of the monster hiding in the dark. A new message appeared on his wrist computer. Robbery nearby. One intruder, small convenience store, nobody nearby. Should be easy? Can finish up early and get back to Watchtower to finish analysis of the Savage case.

He viewed the store and saw that the intruder broke in through the wall. The was a ovular hole in the wall with clear plasma marks as the outside. Plasma weapons were par for the course in Intergang, but there was also the meta-human possibility. This is going to be a longer night.

As he moved to the end of the store the perpetrator went to he realized that they weren't here for the store. They were here for something under it. A secret floor door revealed some sort of underground structure.

"Penny One," Batman told his communicator.

"Yes Master Bruce," Alfred responded over the communications.

"Check the 7/11 on Kane Street there appears to be some sort of underground structure hidden from plain view."

"Right away sir." There was a bit of a silence as Alfred scanned. "It appears that there is no public record of any underground structure."

Great going into the dark with this one. Batman jumps down to the basement. There were lights on so he didn't have to use night vision. He walked down the hall way to the end where he heard some sort of tossing. He hid behind a wall next to a door. He looked in and saw he was dealing with one person. They were searching through a bunch of papers.

"Boss," the man said into a communicator. "The file named enhanced is not here."

"Did you check bellow the file cabinet?" He recognized the voice. Scarecrow? He hasn't been seen since the raid when Robin-Jason died. The man then lifted the cabinet up.

"Oh here it is. Anything else you need here boss?" the man said. He wasn't going to get a chance to respond to that. Batman then walked into the room with a taser and fired it at the man.

"Arghhhh" It hurt as he fell to the ground but then something unexpected happened. The man got out and released a wave of energy. The blast hit Batman to the back of the hallway. He got up and saw another shot of energy was being fired at him. He jumped to the side to dodge. Next he jumped through the door to the basement and into the store. He didn't have time to be save as shots started coming out of the ground. They were clearly being shot blindly. Rather not take the odds of being hurt he jumped out of the window. The shots kept firing until the entire building collapsed. He didn't see the guy leave.

"Penny-One, I'm sending footage now, upload this guys photo to The Brother."

"Right away Master Bruce," Alfred responded. "We have a match for a Mathew Briden, low level crook, ran with Joker, Two-Face, and Black Mask before being arrested during your time away."

"Strange this file shows that he has no meta human abilities."

"Could he have gained them recently?"

"What does the Brother say about his last 24 hours?"

"Sir, he appears to have last been spotted at a warehouse by the docs."

"I'm heading there now."

 **GOTHAM DOCKS**

The Gotham Docks were widely known for smuggling. A quarter of all East Coast drugs were smuggled in through here (though down from four-fifths when I first started). Weapons, porn, humans all came in from here.

"Penny-One the warehouse is surrounded by armed guards. They are also moving something out of it. I've got four armored trucks moving something out of there," he said.

"So I take it Mr. Crane did not return to Gotham for his psychology career," Alfred replied.

"Apparently not." He then jumped and glided to the outside of the building. There he took out two guards as they went past each other. The reaming four on the outside were not going to be a problem when he was in.

Once he got in he noticed that the trucks were being filled with some sort of freezer. Whatever Scarecrow was moving here it had to be kept cold.

He noticed that they were emerging from one location with nobody else in there. As he entered the room he realized that this place was also designed to keep temperatures cold. The he noticed that one wall was a collection of vault like a morgue.

Then he opened the door to see a body. So this is an actual morgue. There was something unique about this body. It had animal like teeth and claws. Was this guy also a meta? he checked some of the other vaults and realized that they few of them had bodies. Was that because they moved them? Then he saw another body with gold skin. Were these all metas? Was Scarecrow collecting them... or making them?

"Penny-One Scarecrow is transporting bodies out of here," Batman said.

"How many and for what purpose?" Alfred responded.

"Unknown count, could be 200, but they are all probably metas."

"Oh dear that cannot be good."

"No arghhhhhh-" he was cut off when he was hit from behind.

"Well about time you finally showed up," he recognized the voice. Deathstroke! "Deathstroke what are you doing here!"

"I would have done this solely for the money but I was hoping I would be able to beat up your man-whore son because he is a piece of shit." Deathstroke was very enraged at the mention of his son. Was he referring to Nightwing or Robin? Probably not Tim.

Deathstroke then swung at him with a sword. Batman used his arms to defect the attack and jump up. He heard several goons coming. Better get out of here.

Batman then grappled to one of the gargoyles. Then he realized that they were running outside the building.

BOOOOOOM

He heard an explosion on the ground and instinctively jumped out a window. The entire facility was in going up in flames. He looked over to some of the guards that he had detained earlier. They were trying to get away. As if they can run away fast enough. he was already ahead of them between the crates they tried to escape from.

"Stop!" Batman appeared before them and they both seemed to have pissed their pants. One guy fell backwards and took out a syringe. He then injected himself with it. "NO!" he then saw that the other did the same.

He went over to them and saw that one of them seemed to be going into a stroke. He couldn't tell what was happening but he did find more syringes. He better keep some of this for analysis later. He looked over and saw that the other was collapsing but nowhere near as bad as the first guy.

"HEY!" he called out. "What did you inject yourself with?!" The guy then started vomiting. He walked over and then realized that some spikes were growing out of his back. Both of his arms had extended too with fingers that looked like Edward Scissorhands but with bones. "What the hell!?"

The man then swung his hand at Batman which he easily jumped above. His swing easily cut through the containers. Batman also jumped back a few times to get space. He then charged at Batman, so Batman fired a taser at him. The shock worked and he fell to the ground.

"Penny-One, get the Lab ready for chemical analysis."

"What for Master Bruce?" Alfred responded.

"I'm sending you video."

"Oh dear is that some sort of super power serum."

"I think this is what is responsible for the bodies in that Morgue. I have a few of these I'm going to inform the League."

"Don't you like to keep your villains separate Master Bruce?"

"This could spread nationwide, if it does we need a coordinated response." Batman then headed to the Gotham City telephone box Zeta-Tube.

 **DEATHSTROKE'S HELICOPTER**

 _Deathstroke's POV_

The helicopter encircled the fire before heading out of Gotham towards Central City. He would probably think that this was the Light and that Scarecrow was a new client of theirs. Boy would he be wrong.

RINGGGGGGGGGGG.

"Hello Supreme Commander." Deathstroke said into his phone.

"Please, Slade, your one of my oldest employees. Call me Damien." The Supreme Commander said.

"That would be unprofessional in my line of work."

"Always the workaholic. If only every company could have a worker like you Slade. What happened at the facility?"

"Batman appeared."

"What did he find out?"

"He saw some of the bodies and got some of the NEOHUMAN serum."

"Well then accelerate the time table on the attack."

"We can begin an attack in one to two weeks."

"What else do you need? You have an army dont you?"

"Weapons and Planning. These soldiers won't last more than 24 hours. Timing is everything, as a man who has waited a hundred years you should understand it."

"Ha. I should know that lesson better. What about Arkham Knight?" Deathstroke clenched his teeth at the mention of Arkham Knights name. he also growled a bit. "Okay... that's a no."

"None of his sidekicks showed up."

"Well when we see the Arkham Knight next you can kill your son-in-law." Deathstroke proceeded to punch a side of the helicopter, causing a dent, when he mentioned Arkham Knight's relationship with his daughter. "Sorry."


	8. False Identity

**THE WATCHTOWER**

 _Wonder Girl POV_

"Move it a bit to- DONT TILT IT," Black Lighting said to her and Static.

They were helping set up new bio research equipment on the Watchtower. Something about being able to help meta-humans reduce and control their power. Something like they sit in here and the liquid in this container (which has an open top for no practical purpose) would allow for a psychic interface that calms the brain and transfer genetic data to the computer. Martian Manhunter apparently gave some stuff to Dr. Palmer and it ended up being this. Batman was in the corner detectiving.

"Ok is spilled onto the ground," Black Lightning said.

"What does that mean?" Static asked.

"I don't know."

"What does I don't know mean?," she asked.

"It means that I don't understand bio-electro-psychic-mechanics." Well that is probably not a degree. WAIT A SECOND.

"You had us move dangerous chemicals, with no idea what they could do!" she said enraged. Static then looked at him as well.

"Well." he looked as though he just came to a similar conclusion. "Yeah."

"WHY?!" Static asked.

"Well The Atom was going to have you guys move this stuff but then something physics problem in Dubai, and he was running to the zeta tube and wanted me to move it then you guys walked in.

"Should we be concerned about the other 10 canisters of potentially dangerous goo we just moved?" she said in panic.

"No," Batman declared. "I talked to Palmer about the Geno-Chambers. The liquids evaporate when it comes into contact with biological life which is why it has an open lid, to relieve the air pressure. But it can only affect humans, in non-permanent damage ways, if it is consistently applied for an hour."

"What?" she said in confusion.

"It's safe."

"Got it boss."

"I'm still washing my hands," Static declared.

"Me too," Black Lightning said.

The two started to walk down the hallway. She probably would have also gone to wash her hands, but she wanted to talk to Batman about improving her leadership skills. When those two had left the room, she started talking.

"Ummm... Mr... Sir? Lord? uhh..." She had no idea what Batman's official title was. Was he like a Knight and had the British surname thing or did he just use Mr.

"Just Batman will work, only my butler refers to me as Master," he said while focused on his work.

"Ok just Batman... you have a butler?" she asked very confused on why he would drop that fact. Robin, despite a six month relationship, hadn't spilled anything about their civilian lives and would only say "Batman's orders" when she asked.

"Yeah, hasn't Tim told you about this?" he looked at her as if he expected her to know.

"Tim?" Who was that?

"Robin hasn't told you his secret identity?" he looked at her in confusion.

She paused for a second. This had to be a joke. There is no way he did not know about his own rules. "He told me you refused to allow anyone to know," she said in a very unsure tone.

"Oh. Well I dropped that a few days ago." he said casually.

WHAT! I CAN KNOW THE BAT FAMILY SECRETS! Maybe they will teach me the disappearing thingy. Wait his name is Tim! What's Nightwing's? Spoiler's? or even...

She couldn't see herself, but her face was in a state of shock and she was muttering incoherent things.

"Alright," Batman said, somewhat amused by her state of shock. "Well... I'll just tell you everything you need to know." She instantly focused on Batman who was focused on his work. "Robin's name is Tim Drake, Nightwing is Richard Grayson, Barbra Gordon is Batgirl, Stephanie Brown is Spoiler, and I-" she focused even more on the announcement "-am Bruce Wayne." He then positioned his hand as if he was telling her SHUSH.

OH! MY! GOD! GREAT! HERA! (trying to work on using that last one) Billionaire Bruce Wayne is the Batman! Wait does that mean I'm dating a billionaire heir. That explains how he can afford the fancy equipment. And Bruce Wayne's donations to the Justice League. Wait... Batman's sidekicks all have different last names... are they not related?

"How... How are you related to your sidekicks?" she said the word sidekicks despite personally not liking the title herself.

"I'm not. I'll tell you how I met them but not all at once and Static and Black Lightning will be back soon so I can't tell the whole story."

"Ok." she said disappointedly.

"You can ask Tim." Who is-oh right Robin, her boyfriend. DUH.

"Wait, don't you... I mean didn't you... I ummmmm..." she was stuck at a loss of words for how to ask this question. "Who is the Robin in the memorial?" She said in a panicked speed. She looked up to see some shock in his eyes. This was an awkward question I should not have asked. Batman stopped working for a second.

"He was..." BATMAN AT A LOSS FOR WORDS. I should not have asked that. I'm a horrible person. I'm a horrible person. I'm a horrible person. I'm a horrible person. "His name was Jason." He then looked at his screen as though he was trying to avoid eye contact with her.

She then turned around and saw that Static and Black Lightning were walking back. Then Flash ran into the room.

"Yo Batman, can you help me with this case," Flash said.

"Sure but I got to leave soon, Scarecrow case back in Gotham," Batman replied. Then an alert showed up. "Shade. Bank Robbery in Metropolis."

"'I'll go." Black Lightning declared as he ran to the Zeta platform.

 **"Designation 23, Black Lightning"**

She decided to walk over to the Zeta Beams. There she stopped and started to wonder. Why didn't Robin tell her yet? Batman said he gave permission a few days ago. She went to a movie with him YESTERDAY. Why didn't he tell her that he and Spoiler were not related?

 _Wonder Girl Imagination_

 _"Robin should we really do this behind your girlfriend's back," Spoiler said as Robin embraced her._

 _"For now. Soon I will do it in front of her once I have taken her innocence. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA," Robin said laughing evilly._

 _"Stop hogging Tim, I want him," a random girl said tugging on him._

 _"No I want him," another girl said._

 _Then a large crowd of girls started surrounding Tim as he laughed maniacally._

 _Wonder Girl Reality_

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. That cannot be it. Can it?

...

He and Spoiler have been almost paired every mission by Batgirl. What was her name again? Stephanie. Should I think of them as their civilian ID or their secret identities?

As she grappled with the consequences of her new found knowledge she was jolted back by a sudden statement.

 **"Designation 02, Batman"**

Oh he must be leaving. Then she saw Batman standing in front of her.

"WHAT," she said in shock. "You were standing right-" she looked back and saw Batman standing next to Flash with Virgil behind and to the left looking on, "-behind me?" she said with no confidence as she looked back at the other Batman. They looked perfectly identical.

What the hell?

Is there a second Batman?

"AHHH," she looked around to see Flash screaming with some wire connecting from Batman (originally on station Batman?) to Flash. She looked behind them to see Virgil collapse as some gas dispersed around him with some Batarang embedded into the ground.

I tried to charge at him but then I felt a jolt go through mer.

This paused her and caused her to kneel but it would not be enough to take her down. Then she saw a batarang appear on the ground and some gas appeared. Then she started to cough and lose focus, turning her head to the Batman that was from the Zeta tube. Then she saw the other Batman charge at him. Then everything went black.

 _Batman POV_

Ok. I did not expect to see him here. The Batman was on board the Watchtower, and not me but another Batman. I would have hoped this is just Martian Manhunter trying to do an impression of me again, though he said he could never figure out how to make a costume as scary as the actual Batman one. Yet this guy had already disposed of Static, Flash, and Wonder Girl with a mixture of traps and gadgets, with knowledge on how to maximize effectiveness. He is no friend, and a dangerous adversary. He charged at me. Fist fight huh, let's see what you've got.

He charged then jumped at me. Rookie mistake, never give up foot control in a fist fight. Batman instantly repositioned his hands to twist him in mid air. He does but the copycat also jumps off Batman's hands. He does a back flip with a twist and releases some Batarang as well. I see the explosives on the ground and jumps off to the side.

Ok he didn't give up footing and used my parry for aerial tactical advantage. He's good.

"Hey what's all the commotion about?" I heard. Then I looked into the corner to see Plastic Man. His eyes then grew at the sight before him and his jaw hit the floor. "WAIT THERE ARE TWO BATMEN? So that's how you are able to do so much stuff." SIGH. Should have expected that.

"O'Brien," the imposter Batman said. He knew Plastic Man's secret identity? This guy is very dangerous. "Don't let him get his hands on this!" he then threw a Batarang at Plastic Man which he caught and held in his hand. Plastic Man started to look at it.

"Sure thing Bat's, what-" he was cut off by an explosion. But not any explosive, and ice bomb. This guy knew his stuff, Plastic Man's stretching powers are weak in the cold. Plastic man was frozen solid, encased in ice. And the Batarang design was identical.

"Who are you?" Batman demanded.

"I'm Batman," he responded. Well at least he takes the role very seriously. Voice sounded like-NO-identical to him. He looked over to see Plastic Man's eyes move in the ice.

I turned around only to see him flee into the Justice League memorial garden. Was this guy heading there on purpose, or was this his first time on the Watchtower? He was leaving with Flash when I walked in here, did he get what he wanted or did he have to leave early? Detective work later. Hunting right now.

Batman ran into the room and saw the imposter on the other side of the garden. Then an explosion of smoke broke out. Batman was thrown into one of the holographic projectors by a punch. Batman got up instantly and saw the imposter Batman by Jason's hologram. Then as the smoke cleared he realized something. The costume has changed. He was wearing some sort of armor and a full sized helmet, mainly grey with a gun pointed at me, and a black Bat symbol in the center of his chest.

"Who are you?" Batman asked.

"The name is Arkham Knight," a machine scrambler based voice said.

"Why are you doing this?"

"You'll see," Batman then threw a Batarang at his gun only to see it flow through him. A hologram!? He must have slipped out in the smoke.

 _Arkham Knight POV_

He hasn't changed. He is still the Batman. I could fool Wonder Girl, Plastic Man, Static, Flash, and Black Lightning. Yet when I stand before him, I can't help but realize how different we are. He always keeps his hands close up to fight while I try to keep it close to a weapon at all times. I keep my arsenal ready, he thinks he is an arsenal by himself. I would like to observe him more but some members of the League and Team will be here soon.

I start to delete the computer data showing my time here, would rather leave it as me just exiting the facility. You know what. I'll leave the footage of the garden. Keeps a good shot with me as Arkham Knight in the memorial there.

 **"Designation 24, Green Lantern"**

This guy.

"What the hell!" Guy Gardner said as he looked at the knocked out Wonder Girl, Static, Flash, and Plastic Man. "Did you do this?"

"Yes," I figured I shouldn't lie to him.

"Oh yeah," he didn't take what I said seriously. Too bad for him.

"You think you can just turn on us huh. Why don't I rough yo-"

"BONK," one punch to the face. He falls to the flood instantly. Should I have expected more from him? I start to smile knowing that this part will be on the security camera.

 **"Designation 02, Batman"**

As I enter the teleported I look back to see Batman try to give me the Bat stare as I teleport away. He thinks that he can scare me with his godly powers. But he isn't a legend to me.

No member of the Justice League is. They are not more moral than me. They have their flaws that I know all too well. Some will still consider them perfect saints of justice but: "There is no sinner like a young saint."-Aphra Behn.

 **LOS ANGELES ZETA TUBE**

Glad I set it to show that I was heading Paris before I went, at least this way I don't have to move cities. I should get this data to Oracle ASAP.

He walks over to a dumpster behind an apartment building four blocks away. He presses the button and the dumpster goes into the ground with the wall it is in front of. He then enters the next Zeta-Tube.

 **THE TOWER**

He then emerges from a former guard station outside The Tower. He walks over to the main tower.

As I entered the Tower in Batman costume I started to take off the cowl and looked in the reflection of the Elevator door.

That was my first meeting with Bruce in years. I was personally expecting it to end up being more dramatic. The there would be rain, a building, a chase and an explosion. All leading to Crime Alley where we first met. A perfect place for us to meet once again. Yet I had to settle for this. The elevator door then opened and I saw Oracle.

"Did you get the computer files?" Oracle asked.

"Yeah," he said in an inattentive tone.

"What happened?" she said in concern.

"I saw Bruce," he told her Batman's secret identity, and Superman's, and the rest of the Justice League. Well it took 6 months (7 in the case of the Bat-family) for him to trust her with those.

"Oh," she was concerned but lost for words. "What did he see?"

"He came in as I was leaving. I got into a fight with Flash, Static, Wonder Girl, Plastic Man, Green Lantern, and Batman."

"Which Green Lantern?"

"Gardner. I used one of the hologram projectors and Batman saw me in my Arkham Knight armor."

"Video?"

"Deleted the footage, except my hologram and me leaving to punch Guy Gardner."

"Do you have the data device?" He then held out a black box.

"I built this thing to contain all the JLA data how did it hold up?"

"Only downloaded a quarter of the Justice League database on the Watchtower before it ran out of space." You can't access the Watchtower database unless you are on it. The database has no wireless communications which makes it impossible to hack unless you are on it. Camera footage is avaliable live and the last 24 hours if you know Barbados security level codes. Which is basically Batman and friends.

"WHAT, how much data do they have?!" She said in frustrated shock.

"The entire JLA history, the Justice Society and the All-Star Squadrons records, and alien computers. So a lot."

She looked dismayed at the failure of her work. "I'll upload what we have got."

After a while they had a copy of their video footage from the Watchtower for decades. "Look for videos from November 22, 2010 and January 15th, 2013 at the Mt. Justice Cave."

"Alright that is very specific. Which camera?"

"Training ground."

"All right here we go." She then pulled up a video footage. "Is-is-is-" she tried to not look by covering her face but had to keep watching.

"Keep watching."

She saw some more footage. "That-That, why would the-I mean-the privacy-," she was flustered by what appeared before her.

"I'll tell you when I want that footage online."

"Why not just do it now?" she said clearly uncomfortable with the topic.

"I want her to suffer for what I had to go through because of them." His deadly serious tone frightened her. "They all left me to die and worse in that state." The months he spent between darkness and fear toxin shaped his desire to twist their reality to know what it felt like. "I don't want to kill them because I can do something much better than that. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA- ugh" She punched him in the gut. His evil laugh still really scared her.

Two Hours Later

 **WATCHTOWER**

 _Robin POV_

"A fake Batman was here," Robin stated. "How good was the impression?" This is the most interesting thing he had ever come across.

"Too good," Static said, still nauseated from the fight.

"It wasn't just costume design. This Arkham Knight had voice manipulation, martial arts training in my image, and a utility belt that had equivalent equipment," Batman stated.

"Can we see that equipment?" Robin asked.

"No he took it all, or it self-destructed, as he left. I'm still unsure what the electric trap was that Wonder Girl got caught up in." Tim then looked over to see Cassie being coached by Wonder Woman. I should probably talk to her soon.

"I've scanned the entire tower, there's no unique technology so he didn't leave anything," John Stewart said.

"Is there anything we use about the guy who broke in," Robin asked.

"Just these," Batman said, showing a hologram of Arkham Knight's uniform.

"What are the 3D cameras for?"

"The Ravager incident," John Stewart said. "We installed them after Ravager broke in here."

"The Ravager incident?" he asked.

"A few years ago Ravager broke into the Watchtower to try to kill the British Prime Minister."

"We let the world leaders up here?" I had never heard of this.

"Just that one person."

"Wait who is Ravager?"

Batman replied "Deathstroke's former sidekick, Ro-" he paused to find his words "Your predecessor defeated him a couple of times and wanted revenge on him for that. Oh and that other thing that also pissed off his dad." Other thing? That's vague of him even for him. "This is the only other footage of the imposter as Batman." A holographic Batman and Guy Gardner appeared before them.

"Why don't I rough yo-," the Guy said before being punched in the face, falling to the ground.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," John Stewart and Wonder Woman could not stop laughing at what happened. Even Batman cracked a smile.

"HAHA hahaha. Ok ha. Seriously," Wonder Woman tried to say. "I bet that felt really good." Agreed. "Where is Guy?" Batman pointed over to the Zeta tube where Guy's body laid. How had we missed that when walking in here? "Is he still unconscious?" she asked curiously.

"Yes." Batman said with a smile. Wonder Woman then took out her phone and started taking photos of Guy on the ground. For anyone else she would not stoop to the level of public embarrassment.

Anyone else.

"Next we-" Batman was then cut off by Wonder Girl.

"Batman I had a conversation with the Batman-as in the other one-the imposter before he left," Cassie declared very quickly. Everybody in the room looked at her.

"What did he say?" Static asked.

"Ummmm... he uhhhhhh-" she was struggling to find the words to speak. "Can I talk to Batman and Robin alone first?"

Batman and Robin both look at each other before Robin says, "Sure."

They had walked into the garden. Aquagirl's machine was still damaged but Wally's, Ted Kord's, and Jason Todd's were still functioning though. "Ok Cassie can you start-" Robin said before being cut off by Wonder Girl.

"Is your name actually Tim?" She asked. Both Batman and Robin looked at each other in shock. How did she know? It took me years and luck to find out Batman's secret identity.

"Start talking!" Batman demanded.

"Oh my god you are actually Bruce Wayne!" She said in shock. She was visually trying to process what she had just learned. The Arkham Knight must have told her. Batman looked at him and knew that he deduced that as well. Robin was taken aback by his girlfriend's statement.

"What else did he tell you?"

"Um. Richard Grayson is Nightwing. Barbra Gordon is Batgirl. Stephanie Brown is Spoiler." This guy knew his stuff. Nightwing and I could be deduced from Batman's civilian identity. But Barbra and Stephanie required additional work. This guy searched for everything. "Oh something about a butler." Well hard to forget about him. "He said he-" pointing to Jason's statue "-is Jason... did not give a last name."

"Did he not know?" Batman seemed curious for why he would not give the full story for Jason.

"He looked sad when talking about him." He must have been trying to impersonate Batman down to the last detail.

"Didn't you already know Batgirl's identity?"

"Yeah."

"And he told you as if you didn't know?" Batman seemed to have made a mental note of that last statement. "Thanks for telling us Cassie. Don't tell anyone else!" That last part was in a voice that he only used when making a serious threat. She heard him and started to walk away.

"So we have been compromised." Robin said.

"Possibly the entire League," Batman replied. "Call the others and have them meet us at the Batcave. I want to talk about this and Deathstroke."

"Ok. Wait! Deathstroke?" Tim asked.

* * *

 **Thanks for the feedback.**

 **Next Scarecrow POV chapter**


	9. Flashback: The Last Laugh

Flashback: After Ravager Incident

 **GOTHAM WAREHOUSE**

 _Scarecrow POV_

In the corner somebody with a fabric mouth and needles for hand, observed the sexual tension between Killer Croc and Orca. The hatred between Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze over some frozen garden. And of course the third rates hopping to jump into the big leagues. This was pointless.

I have no idea why I came to see this second rank villain-fest. They were peasants before me and the vast empire I will run. You can see them and their petty squabbles are not worth your time.

"EVERYBODY SETTLE DOWN," Black Mask declared. The entire room quieted down. "Now that I have your attention it is time for this meeting to begin. Since the arrest of our rival Mr. Falcone a month ago we have had... issues... regarding who owns what. I am here to try and reach an agreement. On how we can divide most of the territory then take the bloodshed down to a few providences. What-" he was rudely interrupted by that... THING.

"HAHAHA oh I have something much better than that Masky!" The Joker so eloquently claimed.

"Joker," Black Mask said in an unnerved tone. He clearly seemed annoyed. "Now that you-"

"THUG." Somebody hit the table. It was difficult to see at first until the revelation hit her.

That can't be.

Jason Todd in his Robin uniform was on the floor of the meeting being looked on by super villains. What was he doing here? Could Batman be nearby?

"JOKER WHAT THE HELL!" Black Mask yelled. "YOU BROUGHT A BAT HERE!" This would clearly be a problem in his plans to take a dominant position in the underworld. He did not want to challenge Batman until he had the upper hand... or at least when he thought he had the upper hand.

Robin then got up. Then just started walking. Why isn't he using a flash bang or one of his holograms. Get out of here you stupid kid.

"Where do you think you are going?," Bane said before trying to punch him. Jason easily dodged. Then Cluemaster attacked him from behind only to be punched in the face. Jason then proceeded to doge most attacks until two face shot him from behind.

Then Joker came in and started beating him with a crowbar. It wasn't easy for me to watch, but I couldn't get him out of here by myself. Every super villain was taking turns kicking him for a few minutes until they heard a sound.

"THIS IS THE GCPD WE KNOW YOU ARE ALL IN THERE COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP."

The police appeared to have arrived. Batman's probably with them. Was Robin part of a trap?

"Oh boo hoo, it looks like our party is at an end," Joker declared as he hit Jason with the crowbar.

Then firing came into the building and villains started to scram. They all jumped outside and started fighting.

The Ventriloquist went out of his way to slap police officers with his doll. This only enraged rather than stopped them. They of course slapped him with batons.

Condiment King fired mustard at people and was promptly shot in the face.

Good riddance to that idiot. Kite-man. Clock King. Prometheus. SOO MANY DUMB C-List villains. My god why doesn't Batman kill some of these idiots. Scarecrow seemingly left the facility while in reality Scarecrow was hiding in one of the gargoyles' above the meeting place (thank god for this cities pro-Batman architecture). Then just as Joker left he started saying something to the weak Jason.

"Well you see Bird Boy I didn't expect to be able to play this joke today. If I could have it would just be you, me, and this," he then swung the crowbar at Jason. The weird thing was that Jason gave no response at all. No pain, no rebellion. What was going on? Joker left a giant box. No idea what is in there, would probably rather not know. "Oh and tell the big man... I say HELLO." Then he left.

Jason simply limped with no emotion towards the exit. As if he had not been paying attention to anything. Nothing on pain, nothing on the broken bones, nothing on Scarecrow above him either. Scarecrow just jumped down. Then instantly Robin tried to attack.

Scarecrow grabbed Robin's hand. "Jason." Scarecrow said. He didn't respond, only trying to punch with his other hand. Scarecrow dodged it then pulled off her mask letting her hair fall down. "JASON," she said.

This time he paused. He couldn't comprehend what was going on for a second. It was as though he was looking at two different people. Then he said. "Likeliest-of-possible-step-moms."

She slapped him.

WHAT THE HELL!

I AM TALIA AL GHUL DAUGHTER OF THE DEMON, THIS IS THE RESPECT I GET FOR SAVING THIS PEASENT.

Wait who else is on the list? She pondered while reaching for her knife.

He proceeded to spit blood into the ground and collapse. "Warn Batman... Justice League." This was intriguing.

"Warn him of what?" she asked.

"Warn Batman... Justice League."

"Warn him of what?"

"Warn Batman... Justice League." He would mutter nothing but this. Thing left me with many question. Who did this to him? Why? What does the Justice League have to do with this? I noticed off to the side that there was a beeping noise in the box Joker left. I opened the box and it was a bomb with a 1:30 timer.

No time. Got to get out of here. I grabbed Jason's computer. That's where the tracer is if Batman needed to track him. I didn't want to Batman to track him down before I figured out what was going on. Picking him up, I got out of there. After exiting the building I looked back and saw the building explode. It completely incinerated it, there were flames outside of it and any police officer or villain too close to the explosion had their body incinerated.

That god damn clown!

She moved to her nearby escape helicopter and got in with Jason. She wanted the doctors at the League to study him before she gave him over to Batman.

 _Batman POV_

I initially wanted to do this differently

I would observe from the outside and hopefully infiltrate under my Matches Malone identity.

Unfortunately I couldn't get an invite under that identity.

Then the GCPD and I decided that once the meeting started we would surround and over power them.

When the raid started I tried to rush in only to be force back by Bane. Eventually I cut of his venom supply and took him out with a taser. Then Condiment King fired some mustard and was shot by an officer. Crock and Orca attempted to share Commissioner Gordon as a meal. They tied me up until I saw it. The entire Building went up in flames.

What could have possibly been in there? Who would bring an explosive-

Oh. HE WOULD.

Batman rushed over to the destroyed building. There wasn't anyone (or atleast any body that wasn't incinerated) in here as best as he could tell. Joker must have gotten out of here before hand. Batman then scanned the area for anything that could give him a clue for where Joker went.

"That can't be," he said in disbelief.

Batman ran over to where his scanner was detecting a sister device.

He saw that it was under a bunch of rocks which he moved and tunneled through. There he found Robin's computer

If there was no body he had to be ok. Right?

 **LEAGUE OF SHADOWS BASE, ARKHAM ASYLUM**

 _Talia POV_

"He is going to be alright." Her doctor told her.

"Physically yes, but something is wrong with his mind." Her psychic told her.

"What is wrong with him?" She said with great concern.

"Nothing is organized. It's as if his entire mental foundations have been ripped out. I have never seen anything like this." She said with fascination in her voice.

"Can we fix him?" She asked with a bit of worryin her voice.

"What is this?" she heard her father say.

"Fathe-"

"You brought Robin here!" He said with rage. "Did I teach you nothing about security? Never invite an adversary into your home." She proceeded to slap Jason who didn't respond.

"Oh he cannot pose a threat as is." She protested pointing to him.

"How can you possibly know that this is not a trap?"

"I saved him, he would have died without me. Batman would never put one of his children in harm's way like this."

"I see your jealous," he said in a victorious voice.

"Jealous?" she protested at the accusation.

"This street rat gets to stay in your beloved's house while you don't. You want to know what it take to be beside him every single day," she looked in shock. "And you think you can learn from him? Or that if you can save him he will love you more somehow." She looked down and wanted to say something in response but could not. "Get rid of-"

"Master!" Ubu said with an odd amount of concern in his voice.

"What could possibly be so important that you wish to interrupt me?" Ra's said with annoyance.

"Look." Ubu was holding up Jason's utility belt and some sort of spider, except it was made out of metal.

"What is that contraption-" father then paused at some sort of realization. "That symbol."

Talia looked over and saw the hexagons. She had seen that symbol before but could not remember exactly where. "Father what is that?"

"Where did the boy get this?" her father demanded.

"I don't know he hasn't been able to say anything but 'Warn Batman Justice League' the entire time he has been here."

Ra's then proceeded to pause. Eventually he moved his head up and said "Get him responding as soon as possible. Then find out where he found that thing."

Initially Talia was happy that her request had gone through, but she also wanted an answer for why her father had a change of heart. "What is that symbol father?"

"It is that of Damien Darhk's HIVE."

She had remembered the lesson's she had learned as a child about HIVE. It was a rogue section of the League of Shadows that tried to defect under the leadership of her Father's apprentice Damien Darhk. The war between the two eventually led to World War 1. "How is that possible didn't you kill him yourself?"

"He also killed me and here I am?" father declared as he walked away.

 **ROBIN CELL**

The room was all black.

You could see nothing but the reflection of darkness off some sort of glass.

They you hear a tapping sound against some sort of glass.

"Hello is this thing on," a disturbing voice said. "There we go." The voice realized that the camera was working. "HEY BATSY, look at what I got." The lights then turned on with their focus on Jason Todd.

The camera then panned to an energy deprived Robin sitting on a chair. He was at a distance in the center of some sort of dome of TVs reflecting his image. "Look, I know Harley is a one of a kind, but she is no bird and when this appeared before me, how could I not take this offer HAHAHAHA."

"OH and make no mistake. A few days with the Clown Prince of Crime gives you a real perspective on things. Trust me Batman he's my boy now," Joker now allowed his face to be seen on camera. "Boy who do you follow."

"You," Robin declared.

"Good, now let's see if I can get some good stuff out of this. What's your name?"

"Jason Todd."

"And Batman's?"

"Br-"

"BANG," a gun hit Robin in the chest.

"Never did like a tattle tale." He brought the camera focus back onto himself. "You see Batman. This is what happens when you bring your little friends into this twisted little game of ours. HAHAHHAHAHA." The camera then cut off and Joker's face suddenly became Talia's.

"Mistress is he ok." Essence, her psychic, asked.

"Of course that extra armor should hold against these weaker bullets," Talia declared with no worry. "Address this to Jason Todd, Batman will find it."

"Of course mistress," Essence then took the flash drive with the video and walked away.

Talia walked over to a moaning Jason. He was trying to get up, but that bullet wound still hurt. "There, there my boy," she said lovingly. "I'm here for you." She started hugging him as he bleed onto the floor.

Two Weeks Later

 **Bat Cave**

 _Batman POV_

Batman woke up from one of his naps (rather than sleep he 10 minuet naps every once in a while and it adds up). He had continued scanning the city for weeks. Hadn't shaved or showered in that time either. Some of the criminals who had escaped the warehouse bombing were still out there.

Catwoman. Black Mask. Bane. Riddler. Freeze. Croc.

And specifically HIM.

One of them had to have known where HE was. Hatter seemed like the most likely option.

"Master Bruce," he heard Alfred say. "You have a guest." He got up and saw who it was. He didn't expect him to appear at this time.

"Hey Bruce." he heard the voice and was somewhat disappointed. This was not the son he hoped to see right now. "We need to talk."

"If you are here to help search for Joker you can start by tracking Mad Hatter," he coldly ordered.

"Bruce, you should have expected this," Nightwing said. Completely tone death.

"What!" he said with controlled rage.

"I was much more skilled, I could work on my feet. Jason didn't have what it takes to be Robin. People gave you that advice. You didn't take it and look at the results."

"You got lucky," I simply declared. That was true. "It's the only reason you're here."

"No, I didn't pick some random kid who I felt sympathy for one second and try to turn him into a expert in everything." I try to keep a poker face but if Dick was looking at me he would see the rage. "You have no one-."

Bruce instantly punched him in the face with a force he had never used before. "DON'T YOU BLAME ME FOR THIS."

Dick was shocked by his reaction. "What are you going to do? Jason is dead. Go on arrest Joker and find your vengeance, this is just some hopeless crusade." Dick started to walk up the stairs before leaving. He coughed some blood on the stairs. "You shouldn't have tried to make a Robin clone."

Once Dick was out of view. He punched the computer shattering the board into pieces before starting to cry and put on his mask. Then he headed out.

One Week Later

 **ARKHAM ASYLUM**

 _Talia POV_

"Erase and bring the next." She declared. Her men brought the beaten Catman before her psychic as she erased memories of what transpired here from Catman. Sad that Jason had beaten his face, maybe that cat [redacted] would prefer one of her own kind over my beloved if he has a somewhat decent face.

"What did you get from him this time?" she asked her psychic.

"Just another patrol mission." Essence responded.

"Damn it. We need to know what occurred before he was captured and how HIVE is involved." Whenever Jason confronted some villain he would be able to conjure up some sort of mental structure that would allow her psychics to peek into some memories. They had spent the last few weeks having Jason fight some third rank villains to see if they can get any memories back. They would only have patrol missions, nothing from the moments before Talia found him.

"Perhaps... If we had him fight a higher rank villain... he would remember more."

This idea intrigued her. But who would she pick, a member of the Light? A Superman villain?

"Mistress," one of her assassins called upon her.

"What?" she asked.

"We have found the clown." A smile came upon her face in a way that gave her a bright idea.

"Distract the Batman for now. I have things I must do."

Two Days Later

 **JOKER HIDEOUT, VIRGINIA**

The clown had 38 guards surrounding his hideout. This was going to be a piece of cake for her. After all she had already taken down 23 of them.

She jumped down and discarded two of them stealthily. She then hid behind a crate. She was looking at the other guards before hearing a small groan.

She looked behind herself. She saw Jason choking out a guard behind her.

" _Essence_ " she said psychically. " _You are supposed to be watching Jason_." She brought him with her because they wanted to have Jason beat Joker here.

" _Mistress he is... he is GONE_!"

" _No he is in front of me_." Idiot. She face palmed. I would reprimand her later. Now I have to take out these other guards. "Well I will have to..." she looked back and Robin was gone. She looked forward and saw all the guards were unconscious. "Not bad."

Jason had jumped onto a gargoyle two of the guards came out of a door. Talia to the staircase and broke a window.

"What's that?" one of the guards said as they walked over to the stairs. She was going to take one of them out on the stairs, but to her present surprise Jason grabbed them both by the head and smashed them together rendering them both unconscious. He probably too out the others on the way here.

So this is what Batman and Robin are like huh. Having somebody ease the workload for you. I could get used to having a sidekick.

They walked into the next room and saw Joker with some sort of body. Then they realized that there was more than one there. My god he slaughtered a whole family of 5.

"You bastard." Talia yelled.

Joker looked over. "BIRD BOY, you're here. And you brought your step-mom, Why, now I can spend my time unlike at the warehouse."

Even he refers to me as the step-mom... this must be rock bottom.

Jason charged at Joker and punched his face into the ground. This continued for a while until Joker's flower released some gas. Jason started to cough. "ROBIN," Talia yelled.

"BANG," Joker had set off a gun, Talia had been shot in the stomach.

"TALIA," she heard Robin yell.

 _Robin POV_

Robin could not tell what was going on. For weeks he had been only surrounded in darkness, getting occasional glimpses of villains he had once fought. Clock King. Calendar Man. Catman. But he could not control his own body then, only watch it as he could.

Now everything was changing, he had control of his body again. Around him there was not darkness but something... something worse. The green and purple sky contrasted with the white ground he looked to his side and saw some dead bodies. They were surrounded by a red river of blood. In the river were fish who had Joker's face. The mountains were all made of skin that was rotten and sewn together.

"Please," one of the bodies said. Jason was shocked because he was sure they were dead. "Avenge us" as they pointed bellow him. They grew in size until their faces were the size of Mt. Rushmore. Their fingers were pointing at the ground. There he saw the Joker. He saw a 'BANG' flag come out of his mouth pointing off to the side. There he saw Talia. He didn't know how he could tell it was her. She was in some sort of bat costume. A Batwoman costume? She was clearly shot. But rather than blood a bunch of mini Jokers came out of the bullet-wound laughing.

"TALIA," he yelled.

I ran over and saw the wound. Grabbing some med equipment from my belt and I put it on her wound. It kept the Jokers from coming out but he could still hear the laugh.

"He's getting away," the bodies said in unison as they got bigger engulfing the entire sky.. There he saw a Joker running across a rainbow bridge. He looked to the side and saw a knife and threw it. He stabbed Joker in the arm. "HURT HIM," the entire world commanded. He slowly started to lose control of his body. His body started walking over to the Joker, grabbing a crowbar on the way. Then with the little control he had over his body he swung the crowbar at the Joker's head. As he lost control his body started smashing Joker's skull into the floor.

"HAHAHAHA" was all Joker responded with. As the world phased into darkness, all he could hear was that laughter. In all directions, in all volumes, in all languages.

 _Talia POV_

As Jason beat Joker to death Talia had to wonder. What could make a Batman protégé kill? What damaged him so bad?

"HAHAHAHA, BATMAN WOULD NEVER HAVE THIS MU-" he was cut off as he was hit with the crowbar. "this muc-" he lost his energy with every new hit. "HA ha ha haaaa..." he was dead.

"Mistress," Essence said. "I have some of the memories you seek."

"Good come and get us out of here," Talia said in pain.

"What's wrong?" She said in concern.

"I've been shot."

"I'll be there as soon as possible," she said in a panic.

10 minutes later

 _Batman POV_

He is in there. He was going to pay. This ends tonight.

He stood outside the facility and slowly approached it.

This is some sort of trap. He knows that it has to end now. The building has no outside guards. He wants me to come in. That there is something in there that he wants to show me. That's what this has always been about him showing me what his world is, and trying to bring me into it. But he made a mistake. He knows it now. I will NEVER be drawn into his orbit after what he did.

As Batman walked towards the door something unexpected happened. The entire facility exploded. Everything came crumbling down. What the hell! Had he already abandoned the facility.

He searched through the rubble until he saw it. He had to take off his mask because he could not believe his own eyes. The Joker's body. Had the explosion killed him?

No, there were metal bruises across his body, somebody beat him first. Then he saw something on Joker. A knife. He had seen this knife before. Only one woman in the world had one like it. After all he gave it to her.

1 day later

 **SHANGRI-LA HOTEL, GOTHAM CITY**

"What happened?" he asked, holding the knife in his hand.

"So we are going to just jump into it," Talia said. She stood in a robe with some wine in one hand and a phone in the other

"ANSWER ME." he demanded grabbing both of her arms, throwing the knife on the ground.

"What! You already know the answer World's Greatest Detective!" she snapped back at him. "He was killed long after you should have! been allowed to live."

"Why?" She proceeded to slap him.

"What reason do you need? Was Jason not enough for you?" he instantly broke the wall next to them.

"DONT ACCUSE ME OF NOT CARING FOR HIM!" he yelled enraged. She took back after this.

"Well, your ethics got you here." she stated.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You knew that one day, specifically he would be responsible for your greatest failure and there was a way to stop this. You didn't stop him. And now there is nobody to blame but yourself."

He paused as he considered her words. "You're right." he said and she was surprised that he agreed with her. "This is my fault." She did not expect to hear that. He started to fall to the ground and cry at the realization of his own words. She embraced him in her arms before kissing him.

"You could use a shower," she reminded me. I did smell awful. "I can help."

The next morning

As he woke up to the sun he was struggling to remember what happened last night. Then it all suddenly hit him at once, he felt a mixture of emotions between sadness and joy. As he looked around he saw Talia gone and his clothes neatly laid on a nearby chair. He put on his communicator when he saw it was ringing.

"BATMAN!" he heard Superman and Wonder Woman say.

"What." he was annoyed by the yelling since he had just woken up.

"You have been out of contact for half a day."

"So what." He responded with annoyance that they cannot get by for 12 hours without babysitting.

"We heard that you were going after Joker. What happened?" she asked with concern

"He's dead," he told them with no emotion behind the statement, a result of his own uncertainty about what to feel.

"What happened?" he hears Barry's voice. Was the entire League on the comms?

"I'm not telling anyone." There was silent for a while after that sentence.

"The Team is asking to see you."

"They can train another t-"

"That's not what this is about." Wonder Woman interrupted.

"Then what?" he said clearly annoyed. There was silence, as if they expected him to say yes. "Fine I will be there."

12 hours later

 **MOUNT JUSTICE**

That took longer to get here than expected. He had spent a few more hours extolling rage across 6 continents that he had reserved for Joker. He only came here because he figured that he could grab some food. The costume was torn in several places and bandage was placed outside his hand. There was also a shuriken still in his chest, so he flexed his muscles and it fell off easily.

He looked over and saw Superboy, Troia, Kid Flash, Nightwing, and Zatanna at the center. He spit some blood on the floor. "What do you want?" he said in a very growly voice.

"Umm, we can get you some clothes," Kid Flash said.

"That all. I'm grabbing food and leaving." He started walking towards the kitched

"We wanted to show you something in the grotto." Troia blurted out. He paused for a second. Confused by what could be in there.

"I don't need to look at some cave." He then tried to walk away, before being grabbed by Superboy and Troia. "What the hell are you doing?!" he demanded an explanation.

"Just follow us," Nightwing said. They moved for a while until they reached the grotto. There he was confronted with a hologram of Jason.

"What?" he was confused.

"We... We wanted to honor him," Troia said.

"We figured that, well he liked holograms-a lot-so we figured we would put one here to remember him by," Superboy said.

"I ummm-" he was at a loss for words. Ultimately he just said "Thanks." He was silent for a while before he asked, "Can you all leave me here for a second?"

The teenagers all looked at each other before leaving, Nightwing was the last, all he did was put his hand on Batman's shoulder before going.

When they were gone, Batman took off his cowl, his hair had some blood in it because of a injury he had sustained. "I'm sorry," he told the hologram.

48 hours later

 **NADRA PARDAT**

 _Talia POV_

"The Justice League did this to him?" Ra's said, clearly not believing his daughter.

"It appears so master," Essence declared. "It seems as though Miss Martian tried to rip out some of his memories and in doing so locked away and fractured his conscious and personality somewhere deep in his brain. What appears before us is a back up conscious. Acting autonomously on somewhat primitive functions."

Ra's face still looked unconvinced. "Find me more evidence first. But if this device has what HIVE wanted aboard the Watchtower, I want to know what is on it." Ra's then walked over to the un-responsive Jason. "Get him functioning as soon as possible. Daughter I-"

"Think I should stay with him." He looked at his daughter's declaration. "I am the only person he appears to be responding to. Let me deal with him.. A Batwoman and Robin thing."

"Very well, you can have your...sidekick."

She then left to the medical bay. Jason was sitting upright but did not seem to respond to anything around him.

"Is he still not responding?" Talia asked Essence.

"No mistress," she responded.

"How did you get the memories of his fight with the Justice League?"

"I kept a psychic link through the fight, when he was hit with that gas all of a sudden I had access to his full subconscious."

"The gas?"

"Yes mistress." That gave her an idea. She had collected some of Scarecrow's fear toxin incase she needed them to play the role.

"This isn't the same thing, but might as well test it out." Talia then injected Jason with the Fear Toxin.

He seemed as though he was going to faint for a second. Then he had a series of bursts. He threw around some of the hospital equipment at her and her psychic.

 _Jason POV_

WHAT THE HELL!

He saw something injected into his body the entire world changed again. Then a bunch of colors starting filling the sky in a circle. He was dragged into the and fell from the sky before hitting the ground.

This time I was in the Batcave but everything seemed... off. It wasn't Batman based memorabilia but all Robin. A giant Robin-card, a Robin-mobile, a Robin costume-wait that's not my costume that's Nightwing's. Then I heard laughing from behind.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA," I turned around to see Nightwing, but he was in an adult version of his Robin costume.

"Nightwing?" I said in confusion.

"Hello Jason. Take that off, is not OG." He looked down, he was also in his costume. What was going on. He looked back up and saw Nightwing jumped at him. He rolled backwards to dodge Nightwing.

"Dude what are you-" Nightwing threw a batarang at me. I saw that it was an explosive and grappled to one of the higher platforms. I turned around only to see Nightwing come at him again this time with a bow staff rather than eskrima sticks. "Is this about what I did with your credit card?"

"That the best joke you could come up with? That you're a criminal. That should have prevented you from becoming Robin in the first place." He then punched me off the platform to a lower one.

"You got yourself fired!" I yelled back at him. Then throwing a explosive shuriken at him. I was then thrown into the car. I punched him into the car, but when I tried to do it again my hand was grabbed. Nightwing then shoved my face into one of the tires of the car.

"Recognize this one?" Nightwing asked. "It's the one you stole. That's all of you that belongs here. No exhibit, no car, no costume. Just something a stupid kid tried to steal."

I then swirled and pushed myself and Nightwing down into the depths of the cave. Yet we didn't fall and hit the ground we kept falling through some black abyss. Eventually Nightwing started to melt in his hands. Then I kept falling until I hit the ground. I was in the manor's main room. I hit the ground and started to look into a corner and saw a bat creature.

"BATMAN," I said, this was the only thing I had been looking at with joy for in a long time.

"No?" the figure seemed confused. Then Talia emerged in that Batwoman costume from earlier.

"Talia?" it still confused me why she was wearing that. Did she think it was a prerequisite for an engagement. "Why are you wearing that Batwoman costume?"

"What are you talking-never mind.?"

"Wait you have to warn Batman abou-"

"Yes I know, your friends brain blasted you after some sort of fight."

"Oh and they tried to change Ravager's entire personality as well."

"Deathstroke's sidekick?"

"Yeah that guy."

"We will talk about this later. First you need a shower. Essence!" She called.

"Who?"

"Mistress," this silver hair Asian chick with very black eyes said. She was dressed in a skimpy maid outfit.

"Who are you?" I asked very confused.

"My servant, she will take you to shower. Find him some clothes as well."

"Okay?" the chick then grabbed his arm and took him down the hallway. He realized that hallway was wrong it was too wide and not as tall as those in the manor. Is this an illusion of some sort. Then they got to a room that stored Japanese artifacts. However, when he went in he saw his own room. He then tried to go into his bathroom but was then confused because it was his closet and there were no clothes in there. He looked around and saw that all of his posters were painted onto the walls. His desk and bed were out of place, though the sheets and color schemes were the same.

"I know you must be confused so let me explain," Essence said. "You are currently in an illusion. Everything you see is made to make you comfortable."

"Everything is an illusion. That's very comforting," he said sarcastically. "Why are you dressed like a maid from a strip club?"

She proceeded to curl up into a ball. "I-I-I-I-I can't see how you are viewing this, but why do you have me looking like a stripper pervert." She proceeded to try and back away from him into a corner in fear of him.

"WHAT. I have no control over this. You put yourself in that outfit because you thought I would find it comfortable."

"Well I its to be comforting to counteract the fear toxin." that last part raised his eyeballs.

"Wait I'm injected with fear toxin!"

"Yes that was the only way to get your mind working."

"What's wrong with my mind?"

"It appears that some psychic ripped it apart and your consciousness is severed from your physical body."

"How did that-" he then remembered that M'gann could remove some memories, she must have removed much more.

"Your physical body meanwhile seems to be running on a sort of back up consciousness if you will without fear toxin."

"So now I can't function without fear toxin?"

"Essentially."

"So I'm a drug addict?"

"Ummmm..." she cannot come up with a response. "I guess."

"And what are you? You don't seem human."

"Simple I am the embodiment of the world outside you placed by my real self."

"What? You aren't real?" She isn't real either.

"No... or at least my words are not. Think of me as a computer bot, the real me placed this bot here with primitive instructions to inform you about the state of your psyche, but cannot talk to you directly since a complete consciousness cannot reach where your mind is currently trapped."

"Then what was that conversation with Talia?"

"Simple, your body is still interpreting the world around you, it was merely a way of telling you who is around you and what they want or know. In this case what my mistress was telling the physical you was convayed to your mind in that conversation just now."

"But it isn't real." He really wanted anything to be real right now. "Nothing here is real!" He punched the wall just to feel something. He felt the wall, but it didn't feel like his hand hit it, rather it just touched the wall.

"Yes it appears the fear toxin, and your broken psyche are creating an illusionary world to process information in the real one."

"What happens if I take a shower here?"

"Then it will feel like showers your real body had."

"Then where is a shower?" he asked, as he started taking off his clothes.

"It is-AHHHHH-" he turned around to see her covering her eyes with her hands.

"What's wrong?" he asked with concern.

"PUT ON SOME CLOTHES!"

"Then how will I shower? And you are not real."

"THAT DOESN'T MATTER TAKE THEM OFF OUT OF VIEW"

"Okay," she was clearly freaked out by him only wearing pants. Not a powerful enough bot to tell her real world self, yet powerful enough to feel embarrassment.

He went into the bathroom, which looked nothing like his old one. He saw that there was shampoo, conditioner, and soap, then turned on the water. Only for blood to come out. Then a ton of spiders appearing out of the hole.

NOPE. I am not doing this. He went out and saw she was still in his room.

"HEY YOUR ILLUSIONS ARE SPEWING BLOOD OUT OF MY SHOWER," I yelled. She didn't respond. Then I turned around and was punched in the face. I fell through the darkness again. Did the fear toxin wear off?

I went back into floating darkness. The only bright spot is that I feel as though I am having a shower. The warm water felt nice, especially since I have not felt anything for weeks. I sincerely thought I was dead for a while.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," that-that voice... it can't be. "Oh it can be bird boy!" He looked over and saw the Joker, only 20 ft tall, holding a crowbar, and clearly dead. His body had worms crawling from holes in his body.

"I KILLED YOU," Jason yelled.

"You don't seem to get it bird boy. I exist in Batman, in big bird boy, in your friends, and in you." He started to walk over to Jason, who responded by fleeing in a direction away from him. He couldn't out run a 20 ft man of course and the crowbar came crashing down on him, shattering his reality itself.

He fell for what seemed like hours before crashing down in the Mt. Justice cave, in full Robin costume.

He hit the training floor hard. And he had been thrown onto this ground by Superboy, Troia, and (a very angry) Superman at one point or another.

None of this is real. This is an illusion, specifically one that I made, this can only exist in my mind with my help. I walked over to the zeta tube, they were not working. If this place is in my mind, it must serve some purpose, something it wants me to find. Jason plugged in his computer to the cave monitoring system. The only exit that appears to be working is the hanger into Happy Harbor through the back exit behind the kitchen (one of Batman's secret emergency plans that somehow always come in handy).

He started walking towards the kitchen exit when he saw a force hit the ground launching him into the Zeta tube. He looked back only to see Captain Atom, but something was wrong with his face, he couldn't make it out at first but then he saw it. Jokerized Captain Atom. Then he saw a group of people enter from the hallway with clown makeup versions of Hawkman and Zatanna appeared.

"What the f-" he was cut off by Zatanna.

"Binding," Zatanna said. Then his cape turned into a straight jacket, constraining his movements. He fell to the ground.

"Uoy t'ndid neve yas ti sdrawkcab!" Wait! Why am I talking backwards?

"Because this is my world Robin!" he looked up and saw the Joker staring down upon him. He was holding puppet strings that connected to Jokerized heroes (well brainwashing, war creating, morally dubious heroes). He looked down and this time they were all in clown outfits. "I can mess with it however I want!" then the entire room then turned into a mirror house with a bunch of different versions of everyone in the room. One of the mirrors had a Joker dressed as Batman but looked more like a dominatrix. Another has me with a leather jacket and a red hood. Zatanna had a fishnets costume instead of pants. Captain Atom was blue rather than silver, with a thong, and a target on his head. Hawkman had gold-metallic rather than normal wings. I have never seen any of these costumes before, was Joker-not Joker he is an illusion-why is my mind showing me this stuff.

"What do you want?" I ask. As I turn around Hawkman charges at me with his mace, still constrained by the straightjacket so he had to jump against the wall. Jason was then hit with a plasma bolt by Captain Atom and fell to the ground.

"What did I want in real life bird boy?!" Nothing. There is nothing you wanted in real life! Wait what if he is not supposed to be Joker!

This caused Joker to look concerned and had Hawkman launch another attack at him. This one I am going to have to take. Hawkman proceeded to hit Robin with his mace in the gut. That really hurt. Robin fell right in front of Zatanna who was about to cast another spell. "I get it now." I said.

"erif lo-" he proceeded to punch Zatanna in the jaw, strong enough to dislocate her jaw. Batman would be pissed if he did that to a real person, but I can do it here.

"How did-" Captain Atom tried to say.

"Hawkman's mace has anti-magic properties. When he hit me it undid the spell Zatanna used on my cape."

"Smart boy," Joker commented. Robin then took off his cape and wrapped it around Captain Aton and Hawkman's face. It won't stop them but it will give me a second. "What do you think you're doing?" he then fired a grapple at Joker and latched onto the purple jacket. As he exited the cave into the stage above he grew in size until he matched his normal size and kicked Joker in the balls.

"UGHH, didn't daddy tech you to play-" he saw Robin hold up a lighter. "-nice?" Joker then proceeded to crawl on the ground away from Robin. In the pure blackness of his mind as Joker attempted to get away, his head entered a phase in which he could not be seen.

"That's it show me who you really are 'Joker,'" Robin taunted him. Joker's muscles began to expand and became somewhat darker.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Joker proceeded to plug his ears. "I'm not listening."

"Since when have you ever needed to hear people Miss Martian!" after saying her name she transformed into a tall, somehow less pale than Joker, and had clearer visible gums, several mussels were externally visible. This must be her White Martian form, surprising since I have never seen it myself. "This must be a part of you M'gann that was transferred to me when you tried to make me forget the Watchtower incident. As sort of mini-you you put inside me to wipe my memories properly, like that Essence chic." Wait how do I know her- oh she must have psychically given me the information.

"Of course." That was a quick affirmation of what I said.

"Ok now I don't believe you."

"What do you mean? You're trained by the world's greatest detective you've figured it out," she then held him in a telekinetic grip.

"You have your powers here! How?"

"This is a sort of mental plane, you have what you have when you are most conformable or what is on you. I have what makes me most conformable, shape shifting, telekinesis and all."

"But not your psychic powers because we are both in my head." She then fired a blue dot from her head it hit him in the center of his chest and expand, engulfing his entire body.

"What are you doing?" it was moving at a slow and visible place and as it progressed he seemed to be less able to think.

"Just some... rethinking." he saw memories flash before his eyes only to have details slowly slip. Colors, people, words, they were all vanishing one by one.

"AHHHHHHH," he screamed as he tried his hardest to resist to the end.

"Don't worry Robin, when you wake up it will all seem like one long nap," she said like a creepy step-mom.

Then all of a sudden he felt a weapon in his hand. He had no idea what it was but figured it was better than nothing. Then a sword appeared in his hand with some new memories.

 _Jason's New Memories_

"These Jason are the all-blades," Talia, she must be with my physical body right now. The blade then light on fire.

 _Jason's POV_

"AHHHHHHHH" M'gann screamed.

"Better thank my likely-future-mom for this." He was dropped from her telekinetic grip. "You brought your powers into your mental form, but you brought your weaknesses too." He then stabbed her leg. She started to melt. "Now what are you."

"This is my white-"

"Know that. But you can't even lie in your mental form, you weren't placed here when she attacked me during the Watchtower so when did you."

"I'll never tell you." Ok, she is weakened by her pyrophobia, but she retains mental functions (whatever that means in this place) including memory. Maybe if I can access her memories I can figure out what this construct is doing here.

Then she started to melt away, and he was left alone in darkness... again.

 _Talia POV_

"Jason appears to be doing well," Essence told her. He was a good soldier, but he had no spirit. His memories and skills are back, and he was following her every order but it wasn't the same. There was that one moment of hope when he responded well after falling off that bed, but he still isn't speaking.

"I guess," she said. she looked over to see Jason using the all-blades he was given a week ago. She had some of her father's men fight him to try and learn more about his condition. He only did something that a superior (Essence, my father, and I) demanded of him, or if he was provoked. He had no self care. I can hold a gun to his head and he won't do anything. Which means if I deploy him on a fact finding mission he may not have the judgment to collect what is necessary. That leaves me with removal and retrieval missions. "Have you made contact with him. He seemed more responsive earlier." She remembered him telling her that his friends started the Enrea crisis before losing any verbal control.

"Only for a few brief instances. A sort-of mini-me has updated him on his condition... he did not appear to take it easy from what the mini-me told me."

"But nothing else."

"No, I tried to tell ask him about Damien Darhk but I don't think my questions got through."

"Mistress," she heard Ubu say. "Your father wishes to meet with you."

"About time," she said. She walked through the temple to her father's room at the top.

"Hello daughter," Ra's said. "I wish to discuss what you have learned from the boy."

"He functions-" she was cut off.

"I'm not talking about that," he seemed annoyed at the suggestion of caring about Jason's wellbeing. "Where did he get this device?" he pointed to the spider they collected from Jason's utility belt.

"We have only had a few moments in which he exhibited full competence. We can't seem to access his memory at will."

"I said get him functioning at any mean necessary. So do it."

"Well there is one option we have not tried."

"Which is?" he really wanted to know what his daughter was going to suggest to him.

"The Pits," they would have driven anyone but a few insane. If her father thought Bruce could do it, then maybe...

"Do you hate or love the detective?" her father asked her. "If you hate him, what will rise from the pits will be a curse upon him and his friends. If you love him, you will find another way." Maybe that was a bit extreme, I mean how bad could the pits really screw with the boy.


	10. Family

Present

 **BLACK CANARY'S HOUSE**

 _Miss Martian POV_

Black Canary's house is entirely what you would expect. It was a gym with a bedroom off to the side. There was a kitchen but it was basically part of the gym. It was apparently owned by Wildcat many years ago but he has since handed it down to her. She had only been here a couple of times. She didn't know why she had been called here.

When she walked in she saw Black Canary punching a punching bag. But the interesting thing was that the bag had Green Arrow's face on it.

"M'gann!" Canary had not hear me come in...even though I got here an hour ago. "Please take a seat."

"Okay, what did you want to talk about?" I was still looking at Green Arrow's beat up photo.

"It doesn't have to do with that," she dismissed. "You heard about what happened with Savage right?"

"Somebody kills and immortal and placed their body in the Hall of Justice who hadn't heard."

"But do you know about the message?"

"What message?"

"This is for Blue Beetle and Kid Flash. Robin comes next."

"Oh so he wants to help-Wait what?" None of them had discussed what happened to Robin in years. It's not like it was our fault, Joker got to him before we could stop him. Then Batman got to Joker. It's not like our little secret mattered in this Batman, Robin, and Joker affair. Though we all felt a little relieved when he died, since we could keep our secret, even if stopped shortly what Ravager ended up doing. "I thought the Robin thing was buried- in many ways literally-years ago. What do you think it means?"

"Nightwing thinks that whoever did this must have connected all hero deaths to the Light." Black Canary explained.

"So this guy is a friend," M'gann remembered. "And all he wants to help us avenge Robin's killer's-The Light of course. Or at least that's our story."

"And were sticking to it but, I think we should get the old group together if whoever killed this Savage knows more than some of our friends. Just in case."

"And if he did. Then what?" She was part of the reason we ended out little Cabal. I want to see her admit it.

"Then... can you do it again?" Black Canary asked M'gann. M'gann knew what that suggestion meant.

"I thought we agreed to stop doing that after what happened with Ravager," I taunted her with that statement. Come on admit I was right. That the Light needs to be countered as aggressively as possible.

"And since then we've lost Tula, Ted, and Wally to the Light!" She said angerly. They both looked down at the thoughts of their fallen comrades. "Maybe, no, it was a bad idea to give up the hard line on the Light," Black Canary admitted.

"What are you going to do if this guy knows what Robin, well the previous Robin, knew about what we did?" M''gann said in victory as she converted Black Canary to her side again. "After what happened with the Ravager disaster in Bialya, even I don't think we should go full personality realignment again."

"Why not?" Black Canary asked rhetorically. "It was only a disaster for Queen Bee."

She knew what I wanted to hear. After what Queen Bee did to Marie Logan... Whatever it takes, I promised myself. "Whatever it takes."

"I'm sure this new guy would do the same."

"So how do we find Savage's killer?"

"We wait. Somebody who paints a message in blood has theatrical tastes that imply he will eventually reveal himself as the showman. When that happens we find him and help or 'fix' him."

 **THE BATCAVE**

 _Nightwing POV_

The entire 'Bat-family' has assembled in the Batcave. We all tend to huddle around the main computer and Jason's Robin costume for these meetings. Usually Batman is the first here and Alfred has some food made out for us. But today both of them seem late.

"Where's Alfred? I need foooooooooooooooood? Or else I will eat one of you," Spoiler told us, staring at Barbra funny, who legitimately worried at Spoiler's stares.

"Well Barbra does look tasty," I say as Barbra gives me a 'not funny' look. Spoiler licks her lips. "Apparently the old man's fridge broke down, ruining the food. He just came back and is now and is making food as we speak."

 **"Designation 02, Batman. Designation B20, Robin"**

And there is the head of the family. Predictably Spoiler asked the first question.

"Does this meeting have something to do with the fake Batman?" Everybody wanted to know about this. Who would possible have the courage to intimidate THE BATMAN.

"No." He quickly answered.

That actually surprised everyone in the room. What could possibly make Bruce more concerned than an imposter Batman and call an emergency meeting?

I thought he would be flippant about that, like he was when Robin-Jason-used a hologram set to have the Justice League make a pool in Mt. Justice. Though he was mostly entertained by that one. "This is about Scarecrow and Deathstroke."

"Scarecrow?" Nightwing asked. "He's back after all these years?"

"It appears so." Batman said. Batman then turned on the computer to show video footage of some dead bodies, many of them metas. "He seems to have developed a new form of his toxin. This one is transmitted via needle and gives the recipient meta human abilities."

"So Scarecrow now has superpower drugs!" Batgirl exclaimed.

"Apparently, but with one flaw, anybody who seems to take is at high-bordering on absolute-risk of death instantly." He then showed footage of a man inserting himself with a syringe then dying. "But that's not my main concern?" He then took off his cowl. "Deathstroke was protecting several of the deceased users bodies when he told me that he wanted to kill my son." The girls then looked at Robin and Nightwing. "My man-whore son." he elabortated. They all looked at Nightwing.

"Hey what are you all looking at me for?" I said. They all sported a 'are you serious.'

"Because you are a man-whore," Batgirl said. Ok of course my ex would say that.

"Wha- I haven't-what did I-" I struggled for words for a while before Batman questioned me.

"Who did you do what to?" Batman asked.

"How do you know it's not Tim?" I said pointing to a shocked Tim.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA," Barbra and Stephanie both laughed, falling to the ground, at the idea of Tim being a playboy. "You can't be serious right?" Tim frowned because he felt he was being mocked but he would rather not defend himself.

"Because he is a virgin and you are named Dick," Batman said. Why would he know if Tim is a virgin? How would he even-Nevermind.

"What about him?" I said pointing to Jason's costume desperate to get the allegations away from me.

"Well, I know he did kiss Deathstroke's daughter once." They all looked at him with confusion for suggesting that Deathstroke is actually trying to kill someone already dead. "But don't think you can use the dead to get out of this one."

"Listen if you want to be a man-whore, prepare to face the consequences," Barbra said.

"Wait could this have something to do with the Arkham Knight." Tim asked.

"The who?" Spoiler asked.

 **"ALERT ALPHA LEVEL THREAT DETECTED, ALERT ALPHA LEVEL THREAT DETECTED."**

Bruce instantly pulled up a computer that had video from city park. And there was an AMAZO, using a canary cry and heat vision before setting up a Rocket force field.

"Is that an AMAZO," Robin asked.

"Yeah, yeah that appears to be one," Batman responded. None of them had yet processed what they were up against until their eyes all widened.

Then Batman accessed the Justice League's communications. "This is Batman to all League members available converge on Gotham City Park, we have another AMAZO appears to have already adopted powers of Superman, Rocket, and Black Canary. Batman, Nightwing, Robin, Spoiler, and Batgirl are all on route."

"Superman, two minuets out."

"Icon, two minuets out"

"Oh dear, and here I thought you would all have some of my cucumber sandwiches." Alfred said.

"Everybody Batwing now."

 _Deathstroke POV_

"This is Vicky Vale reporting live outside Gotham Park where Batman, Superman, and several other heroes have engaged in the robot known as AMAZO-" he turned off his phone when he heard all he needed.

It wasn't an actual AMAZO but the robot will seem like one for long enough to fool them. If we had an actual AMAZO we would use it for something better than a distraction.

Wayne Manor had a four layers of scanners. Layer one, aerial in case of a helicopter of other aircraft based attack, these consisted of missiles and lasers. Layer two, lawn sensors incase of foot assault, triggered alarms and lasers. Layer three, internal manor security, has knockout gas and a trap system that allows for titanium doors to hold invades. Layer four, the Batcave... nobody knew what was there because everybody who had tried had not remembered when they woke up in Arkham or Belle Reve.

There was also the Butler, ex-SAS but little else about his past, even his marital history is just a rumor. He shouldn't be a problem for me.

"Dr. Sivana can you fire the EMP now," Deathstroke asked.

"Loading," Dr. Sivana said. "Firing in 3... 2... 1..."

BOOOOM

"The EMP was directed at the Manor, it will last about 2 minutes, made to keep Batman from noticing we are here until too late."

Deathstroke was already running. I could make it down to the cave in 50 seconds where he would most likely be confronted with the butler.

I was wrong.

I met the butler at 35.

"Dear god," he said before Deathstroke darted him. The butler then fell to the floor.

Deathstroke saved time with taking out the butler here rather than down there. Deathstroke rushed into the Batcave by blowing up the grandfather clock. and the metal wall behind it. Thanks Reach tech. The cave layout was similar to what Ra's produced for me when I was working with the Light.

I instantly ran towards the compartment where Batman kept his most dangerous equipment, at least in theory according to Ra's.

"Damien I- AHHH," He was hit in the back, did one of Batman's sidekicks stay behind.

"Well Slade it's been a while." THIS #^&%ING GUY.

"The Arkham Knight. Prepare to have your $ handed to you." I then charged at him with a sword which I used to deflect one of Arkham Knight's bullets. I swung and hit the ground as Arkham Knight rolled off to the side.

"Looking for the area bellow the Batmobile hanger," Arkham Knight said before two magic swords appeared.

"Great now I know where to look kid," Deathstroke replied. I then swung my own sword at Arkham Knight's.

"Yeah right, the League of Shadows had the intel. Which you probably got from them during your enforce sting." They parried and both jumping back.

"Ok, so you didn't spill the beans on Batman, but how did you know about my league intel?" he asked. I then pulled out a gun and started firing at Arkham Knight who jumped behind a computer.

"Your daughter." He hit my gun with a knife immobilizing it.

"#^$! YOU." I then charged at him, but Arkham Knight then threw me to a lower platform. Arkham Knight jumped at him so Slade rolled off to the side.

"Overprotective Father-in-law, that's a new trope." Then the Lights came back on. "Emp to take out the security and see if you can find a kryptonite weapon, that plan seems moot now that the security is back up."

"You will be tagged too kid." Deathstroke then released a smoke bomb which allowed him to escape.

 _Arkham Knight POV_

"So what, I've already won," I declare.

Well Slade is gone, and he didn't get a kryptonite weapon. I then looked over to realize that there was something next to the computer.

"Huh, well I'll be damned," I said out loud. I walked over to see my Robin costume in a case. I looked down and saw a photo. It was taken the after their first day as Batman and Robin. Must be some sort of memorial.

"WARNING SENSORS TO GO OFF IN 90 SECONDS."

My suits internal warning system in his mask brought him out of nostalgia. Gotta get out of here.

I could try to escape via manor, but the sensors outside will probably pick me up. I could use my override-NO, they cannot even suspect I am alive until my vengeance is complete. I could go out via Batmobile escape but I'm going to need one of them. Luckily I know which one to steal.

I ran over to the Batmobile I stole the tires off all those years ago, luckily Batman had me put them back on (well some tires, since the tires I stole was still in his room-I had checked).

Easy to pick the lock on this thing.

Arkham Knight jumped into the driver's seat with 30 seconds left and drove down the tunnel to get out. Got out with 16 seconds.

"Felicity, I'm out with a Batmobile." he said over communications.

"You stole a Batmobile?" she asked.

"I stole the tires when I was 11," he bragged.

"You stole the tires?"

"Did I never tell you how Bruce and I met? Either way, I want to keep this, so prep the storage facility bellow the Tower."

Three Hours Later

 _Spoiler POV_

"ALFRED," the entire family said in uniform.

"I apologize I-" Alfred tried to say.

"You don't apologize when you are hurt," Tim said.

"I'm sorry I-"

"Did you not just hear what he said," I replied.

"What happened?" Batman asked with concern.

"The mansion lost power, I went to go check upstairs, where I ran into our old friend Deathstroke." This sent them into a state of shock.

"Deathstroke was here!" Robin exclaimed

"Ok whatever you did Nightwing, go apologies for it." Spoiler said.

"Once again I didn't-Wait what did he want?," he tried to say. Throwing his hands in the air.

"Guys he made it to the cave," Tim said in panic, calling from down the hall.

They all walked over to see the grandfather clock entrance was blown open.

They walked down and saw that the place was mostly intact, but there were battle scars on the ground. Sword marks and a few bullet shells. Was there a fight or something?

"Computer." Batman said. "Play the last day security footage." The computer then showed cameras from across the cave. Then one showed somebody for a while. "Freeze playback."

"That's Arkham Knight!" Robin said.

"So this Arkham Knight now knows our identities," Batgirl said.

"Well we already knew that," Robin replied.

"Wait what!?"

"While disguised as Batman this guy told Cassie."

"So now your girlfriend knows all of our identities as well as this guy," Spoiler said.

"Pretty much."

"Computer rewind." The computer went back to what appeared before the Black out. "Computer play forward at quarter time." Then it showed Alfred eating a sandwich before it became black and eventually Arkham Knight and Deathstroke were fighting.

"Wait he was fighting Deathstroke," Nightwing said.

"Computer rewind and play with audio," Batman commanded.

"EMP to take out the security and see if you can find a kryptonite weapon, that plan seems moot now that the security is back up," the Arkham Knight said.

"Deathstroke was after kryptonite and Arkham Knight knew there was some here as well." Batgirl asked. The video then showed Deathstroke set off a smoke bomb then escape.

"Ok that's how he got out, what about Arkham Knight?"

The footage then showed him stare at the Robin memorial and pick up the photo bellow it, before running into the hanger and taking a Batmobile.

"Did he just steal a Batmobile?" Nightwing said. "Even I don't have one." He was jealous.

"So did he come here to steal a Batmobile at the same time Deathstroke tried to steal kryptonite at the same time a fake AMAZO attacked Gotham City?" Spoiler asked.

"No, he came here to stop Deathstroke, the fight and conversation on video confirm that," Tim said. "Maybe Deathstroke or Arkham Knight put out the fake AMAZO as a distraction."

"But was he trying to help us or was he merely trying to fight Deathstroke," Batman asked. "Which Batmobile did he steal?" Batman then looked through the database. "I want that one back, intact too!" Batman declared.

He had tons more what made this one so special.

"Why would be trying to help us?" I ask.

"Threat management," Batman said.

"What?"

"Basically he views Deathstroke-and probably the Light by extension-as a greater threat to his objectives than us and tried to help us out as a balancer against him," Batgirl explained.

"Which begs the question," Batman said. "What does this guy want?"

 **UN BUILDING**

 _Lex Luthor POV_

Well this was interesting. Apparently Ra's al Ghul was snatching up all of our deceased acquaintance Vandal Savage's assets, and it appears that the Brain was helping him as well. He had been doing this for at least a week now. While we have not had a meeting in that time, you would expect at least some update on this endeavor. While the Enrea crisis (made of one of our Queen Bee's making) would take up a lot of his time, this would probably be more worthy of his attention.

"I knew you were not just coming to talk to me about your neighbor," Luthor told her.

"Of course not, those barbarians do not deserve our attention," Queen Bee reminded him. The Bialyians had a condescending view of their neighbors.

"I get that this seems suspicious but rather than get worked up about it lets wait and see if these two tell us."

"And if they don't? You are the one to make preparations in case of a betrayal."

"And what makes you so sure that this is betrayal."

"The Themysciran Embassy Attack."

"That was good for Godfrey's ratings and I fail to see the connection."

"There was a Lazarus Pit under it." This actually gave Luthor pause for thought since it implied that Ra's masterminded the attack.

"Plans will be made for the two of us to cut the others out in case of an emergency."

"What about Klarion?"

"We let him in if he wants but he is always going to make his own choice knowing him. Oh I assume you heard about your neighbor."

"What about it?"

"President Horne has gotten the council to recognize the monarchy in-exile over your rebels."

"WHAT. Surely the Russians-"

"They did my dear."

"This is an act of aggression against Bialya. The security of my nation depends on control of this nation."

Bialya has historically had control and non-control over Enrea. Early-Arab slave traders were foiled by sub-Saharan Africans who constantly freed them. Later conquers from Enrea enslaved the population of Bialya. British colonists were able to manipulate Bialya without actually invading by taking their southern neighbor and launching a series of destructive border wars. Independent Bialya attempted to colonize (a word her idiot grandfather used) it as soon as the British left (to the condemnation of Nehru and Suharto themselves). This is their most important country from a security perspective.

"Perhaps you should have a conversation with him."

"I will!" she stormed out of his office.


	11. The Fall of Black Canary

Two weeks ago

 **ARROWETTE'S HOUSE**

 _Black Canary POV_

"[BAHM]" Arrowette threw a good punch at her. But of course she blocked it.

"Nice job kid." I say, "I think I almost lost my balance there."

"Ha soon I will be able to take you-"

"[BAHM]" I punch her and she back.

"Maybe-ow-I spoke too soon..." Arrowette said.

"Next curl your hair!"

"What?" she said as she let down her guard.

"[BHAM]" I then punched her face as she was being distracted. She fell to the ground.

"You got distracted by my words. I learned to box with the best and didn't. Don't think nine months with Oliver can replace years with the best." I bragged.

"I'm gonna get some water." she said, with the need for it clearly in her voice.

"Come on it's only been-" I look at the clock. "OH! That long huh. Yeah get some water."

The two of us had been training for an hour. I had only been on defense until now. Didn't want to go too hard on the newbie, she still had lots of room to improve, but she was coming along quite well. Too fast actually. The kid was a natural. I know Oliver saved her father and worked with her mother for a while, but where did he find this kid?

Her mom was Miss Arrowette, but I'm surprised she was supportive of her daughter's life, given what happened to her father.

Bernell Jones-her father-had been killed by Brick nearly a year ago. He was trying to report on Bricks connection to the Mayor of Seattle (who went down because of a sex scandal later). Cissie then tried to bring him to justice solo... only to be captured and saved by Oliver (weird to think he actually saved someone who was captured). That was supposed to be her only superhero adventure, till Oliver found her fighting muggers on the street. Unimpressed with her fighting style, but loving her spirit, he offered to train her with her mother's consent.

With a few more years of training she might be a greater successor than either of the Roys. Practically a natural child.

"OW OW OW OW OW," she heard Arrowette screaming.

"What happened?" I asked.

"A glass broke and I walked all over it!"

"You didn't see the glass and walked over it."

"Uhhhhh."

Face palm. Too much of Oliver's child.

"Sit down, and where are bandages." I had never been to Arrowette's house. Place was a mansion, the type I thought Oliver grew up in. He had lost his fortune before I had met him, but it still would have been nice to live in a mansion.

"Above the fridge." I then walked over to a side of the kitchen. The fridge was one of these cabinets. They all looked the same? Which one is the fridge? "The big one is the-OW-fridge." I then looked at a cabinet above the big one. There was some alcohol, but no medical kit.

"It isn't here."

"What? Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Ok... There's probably a med kit in my mom's room under her bed. I'll take you there."

"Not with glass in your feet. Where is it?"

"It's OWWWWWWWW-" she put one foot on the ground before screaming. "On the fourth floor, there will be a three way hallway. One giant door, can't miss it.

She then walked up two floors thinking the floor she was on was the second floor. After scanning the entire floor she went up another to see the room Cissie was talking about. She went up to the door and opened it to a master bedroom.

The room was plated in gold, had photos of Cissie's mom inflated to be thrice her real size, sculptures she had never seen before connected to a bathroom that seemed more like a swimming club. Basically it was the movie version of a rich person's room. Why would there be a medical kit in here?

She then looked under the bed and saw two boxes. One was a smaller grey box the other was a bigger black box. The grey one was on top of the black one. She pulled the grey one out first. She couldn't seen any label on it, and thus had to open it to figure out what was inside. When she opened it a bunch of letters fell out.

Better put these back. She picked up the first one and was instantly enthralled by it.

Oliver Queen, 8550 Fox Lane, Star City

That's what the letter recipient showed. Was this letter supposed to be sent to him soon? Wait! He hasn't lived at 8550 Fox Lane since he lost his fortune after coming back. I only know that because he showed me his old house once on his birthday. Was this letter sent to him as far back as 2003. As I scramble threw the letters I realized that they were all being sent to him. Why are they here? Did they never go through?

I should ask him. I think that as my body instinctively stuffs the letters in the jacket. NO I SHOULDN'T-I should get back to Arrowette. I grab the black box which has the red cross on it. I run down the stairs to the kitchen to help Arrowette. I realized as I entered the first floor that I still had the letters. I'll put these back later... after a while.

"Sorry I got lost," she told Cissie.

"I remember getting lost in here as well," Cissie told me.

"Show me your foot and I will take these out with tweezers."

Later That Night

 **BLACK CANARY'S HOUSE**

I really shouldn't open these. I should ask Oliver about them before-well then how will I know the truth if I don't see them. She rips one of them open and pulls out the letter.

 _Dear Oliver,_

 _I wish to talk to you about our involvement after our mutual night activities._

That's it. That is the letter.

Black Canary then picked up another letter. This one had words in it, but they were covered by a bunch of scribbling over it.

The third one seemed more substantive.

 _Dear Oliver,_

 _[redacted] you. Your [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] with a [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] in your [redacted]. Why are [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] such a [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted]. [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted]. I hope you get [redacted] [redacted]._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Bonnie #^$%ing King_

Oooooookay... Just what was in her body when she wrote that.

Well maybe I will look at one last one.

 _Dear Oliver_

 _I've been meaning to tell you this for months. The doctors now tell me that our daughter will arrive in mid-January. I'm thinking of naming her Suzanne after my mother. I keep meaning to send you one of these things. I haven't told Bernell she isn't his daughter. He is still too excited that I find it hard to tell him._

WHAT?

This-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this-this

What-

I

What the-

This has to be a joke.

There is no way Oliver has a kid. I mean, I think he would tell me after all these years.

...

...

...

I can get some hair from Cissie.

I can get blood from Oliver. The hard way preferably. "[CRACK]"

Earlier Today

 **ARROWETTE'S HOUSE**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

Jet Pack charged. Weapons available. Gray case magnetically attached to my back.

This isn't the first millionaire's home I've tried to break into. LexCorp building, Dagger Apartment Complex, John King's Yacht, Wayne Mansion.

This place has got automatic sentry guns connected to lasers. Immediate emergency contact to the national guard if pressure sensors are triggered. Justice League magicians have probably placed magic traps on walls of the house. Should be a piece of cake for me.

Arkham Knight first jumps over the wall onto the hedges. The rich never want to put technology on their front yard art. Or the tree imported from Japan he wants to jump to next. Another jump to a statue in the center of the fountain, making sure to dodge the lasers. Then finally one thruster pack jump to the wall. Arkham Knight grabs the roof of the building. Arkham Knight then reaches the top floor windows. Luckily public data servers are easy to hack.

Ok, now that I am on the ceiling I have to make it to the video room to give Oracle direct access to override anything on the security footage. The place with the best Ethernet port is on the third floor, three bellow this floor.

The trip there is easy, there is one security problem at the door. The door requires an eye scan. There does appear to be a vent into this room, but the laser systems are a big problem. My infrared scanners are picking up heat levels similar to that of a high level server.

Best option to get in there is to create a way into the room. Luckily there is a photo next to it. Arkham Knight takes the photo down temporarily and pulls out a laser cutter. Angling the cutter up so that the part of the wall he cuts out falls down in the hallway rather than the server room. When it does he has cut a hole in the wall about the size of his fist. He can see the server through the hole and throws a circular device, barely smaller than the hole, through the hole and onto the server. Then he waits a while.

"Connected," Oracle said. "I now have access to the security systems of the house. Starting to replace the security footage with as much loop footage as possible."

"Good." He said that as he put the photo over the hole in the wall, using a ice beam to keep the circular cut back onto the wall. "Where are Black Canary and Arrowette?"

"Training room next to the kitchen." Probably boxing, remember those lessons well. Came in handy during my escape from her and the Cabal.

"Heading there now."

When I see the kitchen I hide behind a connecting hallway between a pantry and a wine freezer and the kitchen which is openly visible from the boxing ring in it. Always have some protein after exercising, according to Alfred. Needed to see what was going on in the room.

"Oracle send video footage to my helmet."

The video footage on his helmet then showed Arrowette trying to hit Black Canary.

"How long has this been going on?" he asked Oracle.

"About 50 minutes," she responded.

"Great this will be over in 10 minutes."

"How is it good if you are in the house with them walking around?"

"As if they could catch me." He bragged.

He looked over at the video footage to see Canary teaching Arrowette a fight technique that had them both facing away from the kitchen. He went into the kitchen and grabbed the medical kit and a glass. They were both starting to turn around when he hid in that hallway again. Next he took one of the wine glasses and broke it into shards in his hand. He then threw the shards into the floor between the fridge and the counter in the kitchen. He left a sound transmitter on top of the hallway and left.

Ten Minutes Later

"There is now way she is going to walk into a bunch of glass," Oracle tells him. They were both watching the security system in the house in the kitchen/training room.

"She's a klutz," he replied.

"How do you know that? Are you assuming that because she is blonde?"

"Well you're a klutz, she's a klutz, the connection-"

"Finish that sentence and I will make you pay." After what she did those Russian arms dealers, I'm taking that threat seriously.

"Spicy," he said at her spirit.

"OW OW OW OW OW," they heard Arrowette screaming.

"Told you," he bragged.

"HUMH" She puffed into her microphone.

"Ok... There's probably a med kit in my mom's room under her bed. I'll take you there," They heard Arrowette say.

"Not with glass in your feet. Where is it?" Black Canary Asked

"It's OWWWWWWWW-" she put one foot on the ground before screaming. "On the fourth floor, there will be a three way hallway. One giant door, can't miss it." Arrowette said.

"Heading there now." I tell Oracle.

As I walk into the master bedroom, I did not expect this place to have so much gold and art. Seemed like King Midas [redacted] onto a painting of a museum and Bonnie King said, "Make a bedroom like that."

If she is going to look under the bed for a medical kit, I can probably hide my grey case there. He looks down and sees that there is nothing bellow the bed.

Good thing I brought the med kit from above the fridge. I hid both boxes under the bed and left.

Four Days Later

 **UCLA FOOD COURT**

"What's got you down?" Jason asks Roy. I'm Public Relations Freshman here. 17.

"I'm not down," Roy protested from his face into the table. Business Freshman. 17.

"Yeah you kind of are," Victor said. Electrical Engineering Sophomore. 20. Also a star football quarterback.

"Booyah," Roy said with little energy. Then slamming his head on the table

"You are not all right," Dawn said. International Relations Freshman. 18.

"If he wants to be a moody emo let him," her sister Holly said. Business Sophmore. 20.

Dawn slapped her arm.

"You can tell us," Felicity said. Computer Science and Biology Freshman. 20.

"[SIGH]," Roy was clearly annoyed at the situation around him. "Soooo. My adopted father's girlfriend told me about his illegitimate child." Everybody looked at him in shock. Of course Felicity and I faked it.

"You have a secret brother," Victor asked.

"Sister." Roy corrected.

"How did she find out?" Dawn asked.

"Do not spare any details no matter how lewd!" Holly asked with enthusiasm. Dawn and Felicity blushed. The rest of us just look at her in bewilderment.

"I don't know how she found out!" Roy yelled. Now Roy seemed full of energy.

"So this could all just be needless speculation," I said. I knew it was all fake, but I wanted to at least add something to the debate.

"That's the thing. I thought it was needless speculation too. Then she showed me a blood test and he IS THE FATHER." I spit the water I was drinking out of my mouth back into my cup.

"WHAT!" Felicity stood up and screamed.

Later that Night

 **THE TOWER**

"YOU KNEW!" Felicity yelled and pointed at me.

"What! NO! I didn't-" Jason attempted to protest, holding his arms to up to show innocence.

"You spent months plotting your revenge, almost two or three years from what your telling me because of that." She pointed to his old Robin costume which he kept in beat-up and destroyed condition when. I kept it just to motivate me in the morning. "You planned to have Black Canary believe her boyfriend kept a secret from her. And what better secret than the actual one Green Arrow kept from her."

"That would be brilliant, if I really knew it."

"So you admit it was part of your plan," She declared in victory.

"NO. I wish I knew this. But I didn't."

"How could you not know? You can know anything you want?"

"Why would I know that Green Arrow had a secret-" I paused.

"What?" Felicity asked.

"Does Green Arrow know about this?" They both paused as started thinking.

"I would assume so." They both pondered for a while.

"I don't. There's nothing in his texts, so check his email, its kingofqueens , check if anything there implies he knew."

"Qnet?"

"Before our time." Qnet was a Queen Industries attempt to compete in the email industry. Went bankrupt when we were in grade school. "He's old."

"Why do you think there would be something there?"

"I don't know, but if I knew everything I wouldn't have to search around." She starts hacking into gmail (which bought the bankrupt qnet). This will probably take a while.

"What was your plan by the way for Black Canary?"

"Simple." She focused on me. "I was going to first have her start to doubt those closes to her. Oliver Queen, loving boyfriend, great mentor to children, and champion of the poor: actually a man with an illegitimate child."

"That was the Arrowette thing."

"Ted Grant, superhero Wildcat, trained her after her father's death, always been there for her: because he is secretly her father."

"What?!" That one seriously confused her.

"Then her mother, she died when she was 17, killed by a super villain from her past: or secretly alive in China."

"How were you going to pull off a resurrection?" she was very curious at that one. "And all that was going to be lies." She said while working on hacking into Google.

"Yes they were going to be lies," he says ignoring her first question. "But before she would be able to notice the false hoods she would be confronted another surprising fact, this one true." She started to pay attention again. "One that would send shock waves throughout her world. Thus sending her into a permanent paranoid state believing everyone is conspiring against her! In this moment she will discover to an underground fight club, where she would spend months becoming the champion there."

"What fight club?" Felicity tried to ask. Jason ignores her.

"But the darkness and brutality change her. Makes her darker as her fight for survival loses more and more comfort. The brutality would make her cold and emotionless until the Justice League confronts her, when they raid the facility, dragging her off to Belle Reve. When confronted she embarrasses Oliver by revealing the great secret. Why she has gone off the rails and embraced nothing but anger and hatred. She met Oliver Queen's illegitimate son!" She stood up from her desk and pointed at him.

"SO YOU DID KNOW ABOUT HIS ILLEGITAMITE CHILDREN!"

"CHILD. Singular. I knew about Connor Hawke not about Cissie King-Jones."

"What?" she said very confused.

"Yeah he has a son who's 18 years old." Felicity paused and looked around to collect her thoughts.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"He goes to our school." I smile as I said that. "He'll be in your math class next quarter."

Felicity's jaw dropped at my revelation that Green Arrow's other child, goes to our school. "You think you are so clever."

"No, my plan has gone off the rails."

"How? She knows her boyfriend is a cheater. Isn't that what you want."

"Yeah. After I had planted other conspiracies in her mind."

"Didn't you know that she would be running a parental test?"

"Run by Wildcat's friend Dr. Mid-Nite, who also might have later faked her paternity test. Is he so reliable?"

"You expected the test to fail? Why?"

"Because I didn't know she was his illegitimate child. SCREWING MY ENTIRE PLAN" Jason said from his knees yelling at the ceiling.

"Of course that's all you care about. Of course it is. Well what do you do now?" I paused at that question. Should have a backup plan.

"Can you send me the old Mt. Justice security tapes." She then sends the files to my personal computer.

"What do you hope to do with that?"

"Find out Aqualad's sushi recipe. What do you think I'm going to use it for."

"A Bat kid, mystic sisters, a hacker, a cyborg, and two Arrow kids. Anybody else at our school I should know about." I smile while walking out.

"Sorry, don't want to ruin the surprise."

Present

 **LOCATION UNKNOWN**

 _Black Canary POV_

OWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW

Why does my head my hurt? Where am I? And why do I smell like trash?

I'm surrounded by darkness so I push at all sides until something budges. When It pushes out I am barraged with light. I crawl too it and fall out of something.

I turned around and saw that I had just crawled out of a dumpster.

What happened last night?

Then it hit me.

 _Black Canary's Memories POV_

Last Night

 **GREEN ARROW'S HOME**

 _It's been a few weeks, and I haven't talked to Oliver since. Well I talked to a photo of him... with my fists. I wasn't on call when the fake AMAZO attacked Gotham. But apparently Green Arrow and his DAUGHTER-because that's what Cissie is-were._

 _I walk up to his house. That's weird I don't remember there being three doors at Green Arrow's house. As I get closer to one of the doors I put my hand on the handle and my hand just phases through it. "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa," I say out loud. I go to the other door and start turning the handle._

 _This time I can grab the handle and can touch it. But the door wouldn't budge._

 _"OLIVER JONAS QUEEN OPEN THIS DOOR!"_

 _I couldn't tell what happened._

 _Then she kicked the door down setting off an alarm._

 _"Black Banary-Back Nanny-Black Carry-" she kept slurring her speech. "Black Canary. Override designation 13."_

 _"_ _ **OVERRIDE ACCEPTED,**_ _"_

 _"Yeah accept my override you #^ &%ing machine," I yelled at the computer. "Oooollllliiiiieeee," I screamed as I went up the stairs. "Don't be afraid I just want to talk to you."_

 _I slipped on one of the stairs and fell all the way to the ground. Well better climb these stairs again._

 _I slipped on one of the stairs-again-and fell all the way to the ground. Well better climb these stairs again. This time I climbed up by crawling. When I was at the top I leaned against one of the walls in the hallway. That's when I saw Oliver. Something looked off about him. Could not put my finger on it._

 _"Din-owowowowowow." He put his hand on his head. "Sorry headache." She slapped him._

 _"OOOOHHHHH, you're the one with head problem. Mr... Mr... Mr..." She paused for a bit. "#^$! I had something good to respond with."_

 _Oliver then sniffed me. What was he? A dog._

 _"Dinah are you drunk?" Oliver asked me._

 _I tried to swing at him only for him to see him step back. When my hand motion ended the bottle in it shattered against the wall._

 _"Oh I can handle one shot!" I yelled at Oliver, pointing the broken glass at Oliver. "Or like 8...maybe it was 18."_

 _"Listen pretty bird." Oliver put his hands on his shoulder. "I don't know what is-" Oliver stopped talking. "No."_

 _"What?" He then walked past her._

 _"No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no." Oliver kept screaming._

 _"Whaaa- What is goin on?"_

 _"My beard," Oliver said staring in a mirror. He didn't have his beard. Oh. "It's gone. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO." He hit his fists against the ground in anger._

 _That's what got him worked up._

 _"What is all that noise?" They both heard that noise come out of a room down the hall. They turned around to see Bonnie King._

 _Bonnie was a world class athlete, heiress, owner of King corp. She was also Green Arrow's ex-girlfriend. Arrowette simply knew her as mom. We had never met before, but I had seen her face on TV. And she's coming out of Oliver's bedroom._

 _"What is she doing here?" Black Canary said pointing to Bonnie._

 _"I-uhhhh-What are you doing here?" Green Arrow also wondered._

 _"I-um-I think we were talking about Suzanne." Bonnie replied. Cissie's full name was Suzanne. This statement cause the drunk Black Canary to respond._

 _"Oh your here to talk about the symbol of your love!" I yelled at the two of them. Bonnie's eyes widened to her statement. Oliver seemed confused. Which means that he looks like Oliver._

 _"What are you talking about?" Oliver asked._

 _"Don't play dumb #$$ with me dumb #$$. I know. I saw the letters!" I yelled pulling out the letters._

 _"What are these?" Green Arrow asked._

 _"Don't play dumb #$$ with me dumb #$$. She sent one to you telling you about your daughter." I slurred some of the late words._

 _"My child?" Oliver seemed to take in that last one. "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA." He was laughing very hard at the suggestion that he had an illegitimate child. "You-HAHAHA-You think I'm Cissie's father!" He was on the ground unable to control himself. "Ok, Bonnie tell me this is ridiculous." Bonnie merely turned away. "Bonnie?"_

 _"I can't tell her it's ridiculous because it's true," Bonnie said. Green Arrow had no reaction. "I don't know where those letters came from, but Cissie is your daughter Oliver." He had not moved for the next fifteen seconds._

 _When he did the first thing he did was turn around and tell Black Canary, "I-I-I-I didn't know."_

 _"OH PLEASE!" Black Canary said in rage. "You definitely received one of these letters. Or she told you before you took on her-YOUR-daughter as a sidekick."_

 _"I didn't tell him," Bonnie spoke._

 _"DON'T TRY AND COVER FOR HIM!" Black Canary yelled._

 _Black Canary then used a Canary Cry to send the two of them through a wall into Oliver's bedroom. She had fired them right onto the bed where both of them fell unconscious._

 _"At least you now play the part of Cissie's mother and father," she said before walking out._

 _As she left the house she punched one of the support beams destroying it. She saw a family with a kid on a tricycle looking at the broken door._

 _"WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT," I yelled, throwing the rest of the bottle into the street._

 **OUTSIDE A DUMPSTER**

 _Black Canary POV_

Well at least I don't have to hide what I know now.

"[BEEP]" I'm getting a call on my communicator. Probably Ollie. I check and I don't know what to do. It's Batman. What could he want? A video screen appeared showing Batman, Tigress, and Flash. The last of whom was eating from a bag of chips.

"Bruce what do you-"

"Explain what happened last night." Batman said. "I've been trying to contact you for hours."

"Listen whatever happened. It was because of alcohol. I was drunk and I put it all out there."

Batman's and Tigress's eyes widened at her statement. Flash dropped the bag of chips, opened his jaw, and let the food he was chewing fall out of his mouth.

"You did it. That's your explanation for what happened! That's why it's going on!" Tigress yelled.

"More details. Now!" Batman said. Even Batman was perplexed. The Batman.

"Listen the details are fuzzy with what happened, I know something happened with Green Arrow because I learned Arrowette was his daughter." Black Canary replied.

"WHAT!" Flash and Tigress yelled.

"Ok that was very... informative," Batman said. "But I was talking about the video."

"Video?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"

"YouTube, top twenty videos," Batman said.

I took out my phone and opened YouTube. Cat videos were the first thing to appear. Then she went to the trending section. "WHAT THE #^$%!" she yelled. "This- How did- Who could have-"

The first videos that appeared were enraging her. Superboy x Black Canary AMV. The signs were all there SuperCanary. Suck it BlackArrow fans. She recognized the footage on it immediately. It was from that time M'gann shape shifted into her and made out with Connor.

"I've gotten at least five calls from world leaders asking how we deal with pedophiles within the League," Batman revealed. "Get back here now!"

I didn't process that last part for a while. I was going through the twitter looking at the hash tag #SuperCanary and #BlackCanary. #SuperCanary was filled with largely positive things about Connor and I as a couple. #BlackCanary had a more mixed review, some were thanking me as a hero, some were accusing me of sexual abuse.

 **THE WATCHTOWER**

"How did this leak?!" I screamed at Batman. Flash and Tigress looked on.

"Most likely culprit is the Arkham Knight," he replied. "He must have copied files from the security system in Mt. Justice. Then for unknown reasons leaked them to the press."

"How did we not know about this?"

"I couldn't tell his motive were. When he accessed our system he only used files to solve actual murder cases in Gotham before sending the information to the GCPD."

"So he sneaks on here to be a hero?" Flash asked. "Why did he taser me then?"

"He was clearly interrupted before he could finish his work. Now it appears he used an external device to access the League's computer system. Which means that he made it through our firewalls undetected. He came here for a copy of the League's entire database."

"Which includes that video," Black Canary pointed out.

"Affirmative. Along with anything else that is in the League and the Batcave security systems." We all turned our heads to look at him with that last statement.

"This guy broke into the Batcave!" Tigress asked.

"Yeah," Batman reluctantly said.

"And I was concerned about what I put on FaceBook."

"Who possible has the balls to attempt a heist on the Batcave?" Flash asked. It would take truely amazing balls to try and rob Batman.

"This guy apparently-" Batman was interrupted by a notice to his screen that took him back.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I think it's better we all just watch it."

Then Batman pulled up a bigger screen. With Gordon G. Godfrey's face.

"Oh god what did he have to say about this!" I said. I cover my face not sure if I want to see and hear what he said.

"Many-especially myself-have been warning for years that goodie too-shoes of the Justice League could be hiding something from us," Godfrey smugly said. "But even I must admit I thought it would be one of the aliens that would disappoint us all. Superman's people commit cannibalism. Martian Manhunter has a very purposeful name. Hawkman and Hawkwoman are swingers." Where does he come up with this stuff? "But no-its the adult human woman Black Canary engaging in clear pedophilia." He splashed the photo of Connor and M'gann kissing. "And many of you must be thinking. Was it brain washing? Was it an imposter? Well that doesn't explain why it happened in their secret cave! Let alone why it happened twice." Another image appeared on the screen. This one showing Black Canary making out with Aqualad in the hall of the former Mt. Justice cave.

"What!" Black Canary yelled. Tigress covered her mouth and Flash's jaw was open.

"I had $50 bucks that Oliver would be the one to cheat," Flash said. Ok that's a bet I would have made too.

"That never happened!" I yelled at him. Tigress seemed to not believe me.

"I know," Batman declared. "That was Gemini De Mille."

"Who?"

"Madam Rouge's daughter."

"Who?" Batman face palmed.

"[SIGH] Shape shifting assassin."

"How do you know about this?" Tigress asked.

"Robin encountered her on several occasions," Batman said.

"Wait is her alias Gemini?" Tigress said. "I think Robin-the last one-told me about her once."

"That was because she once infiltrated the cave," Batman calmly revealed. They all looked at him in the revelation.

"Hold it!" Tigress yelled. "A shape shifter infiltrated Mt. Justice and you didn't tell us!"

"You're right I didn't," he simply told her.

"WHY!"

"Why didn't you delete them?!" Black Canary angrily yelled. "Hell why didn't you delete the one with M'gann?!"

"Because Kaldur didn't want to talk about that," he said pointing to the video. "And deleting any security footage gives every member of the League and the team 24 hour warning." I should know that... I recommended that security feature. "For a lot of reasons, he felt it would be better just to leave it in the system. Mainly how he opened up to her about his love of Tula to Gemini." They all never talked about Kaldur's love for Tula when she was alive because the love triangle with Garth was awkward.

"Who else knew?" Flash asked.

"Just Kaldur, Robin-" Batman pauses for a second. "Just Kaldur and I know now." They could all figure out what that meant.

"Ok then how did this get out. Did the girl spill about the time she kissed Aqualad?" Black Canary asked.

"Unlikely, as Gemini entered, and still is, in a coma, the other reason we didn't tell anyone so that nobody would know where she was," Batman said as he pulled up a screen of Gemini at a hospital bed.

"Why did she enter a coma?"

"Whatever gave her abilities proved to be unstable. Resulting in a coma."

"And what gave her those abilities?" Flash asked.

"Unknown. Though I assume that whatever did will strike again someday."

"So you're just going to waiting for the enemy to appear before you."

"Pretty much."

"Great detective work," Tigress said sarcastically.

"Ok that's a good story but what do we do about this." Black Canary said while pointing to the Aqualad photo.

"Get Aqualad and Superboy, meet at the hall of justice with Catherine and craft a statement. We just have to wait for this to blow over."

"Like it did with Captain Atom," Black Canary said. Batman narrowed his eyes.

"Exactly like that," he said. He then got back to work.

"What are you going to do?" Canary asked.

"Going skeleton hunting in your closet." Batman leaves the room. There is an silence in the room eventually broken by Tigress.

"Is Arrowette really Green Arrow's daughter," Tigress asked. Flash ran over to be a part of this conversation.

"Is that why the beard is gone?" he asked.

 **THE TOWER**

 _Felicity Smoak POV_

Of course this stuff ended up online. Here I am eating from popcorn with a guy, who just last week had an elephant trample a gangster. Of course he probably uploaded the photos that make someone seem like a pedophile. Just. That's what he does. I turn around and look at him stuffing popcorn in his smug mouth. Godfrey continued.

"Now are we going to see an audit of the Justice League. We need to know who is a human? Who is there for nepotism? And we have seen tonight: Who is a pedophile?" Godfrey told his audience. This is why he put this on tonight.

"You were behind this weren't you," I turn around to tell Jason's face-to-face.

"Whhhhaaaaaattttt?" he said in a fake surprise. "Why would I possibly release details about Connor and Kaldur's personal life?"

"Don't play idiot with me idiot," I said as I threw some popcorn at him. He caught all the popcorn in his mouth.

"Tasty."

"Ok. How could you possibly have known about those videos?"

"I was there for the second one, the first one was because I asked Miss Martian how she uses her powers and she accidently spilled the beans on she uses her shape shifting. Bit of detective work later and I got her to go be me during school, while I went to a concert." Of course he blackmailed people to get out of school.

"What do you mean by you were there for the Aqualad one?" Is he like a rock in that photo which I can't see.

"Ok. I knew she was a shape shifter, I wanted to see what she would try and do. So I stalked her and ended up in the box." Wait there was in a box. Now that I think about it there was a box in that photo.

"How did you get into the box without them realizing it?"

"I made sure to retrieve a copy of it before leaving the Watchtower." And he just ignored my question.

"And now you use it to ruin Black Canary's life."

"Her reputation."

"And what do you plan to do next?"

He never did tell me when he was going to start his attacks on various members of the league. He had already began with Guardian before I met him. I only knew about Black Canary in real time because he needed me to hack the computers. Captain Atom, I started getting info after he had bribed Dr. Thomas Elliot. He also has me working on "The Fall of John Stewart." But he still hasn't told me his entire plan. Does he not trust me, or is he going to do something he knows I wouldn't approve of. Such as needlessly bringing their kids into this, like my father did with his business.

"That's my secret," he said holding his finger to his lips.

"NO KIDS," I firmly put down that line. "You already planned to use two of Green Arrow's children to further your agenda."

"In my defense I did not know about one of them."

"Still doesn't justify using a child's absent father to torment people," I said. He gave a more solemn face because he understood what that meant to me.

"Alright," he scratched his head as he said it.

"By the way where is the girl pretending to be Black Canary in the Aqualad photo," I said as I pull out my tablet.

"Hospital outside UCLA medical center."

"Why does so much important superhero stuff go on at our school? It's like their all being shoved in here." Jason smirked. I start scrolling through the medical data. "Hey Doctor Caulder is overlooking her. I could-" I was cut off by Jason.

"Stay away from that creep as much as you can," he said as he changed the channel on the TV.

"Why?" I still don't know why he dislikes Dr. Caulder so much. Dr. Niles Caulder is one of the leading biology experts in the world. He helped make Victor's prosthetic legs after his accident allowing him to play football again. Hell he had an entire wing of the school dedicated to his unique techniques to help accident victims.

"Trust me. He will be a problem one day."

Two Days Later

 **HALL OF JUSTICE**

 _Black Canary POV_

"How can we know that this was not you?" Ron Troupe asked me. Ron Troupe, world class journalist, expert in domestic affairs, and my interviewer. Catherine Cobert suggested that we confront this head on rather than have anyone ask why we were avoiding the question. She initially suggested Godfrey, but that seemed like a step too far.

"Unfortunately due to the circumstances we cannot show you who was masquerading as me," I replied. "The individual is in protective custody."

"That sounds like an excuse not a reason." He was clearly not enjoying this interview either. He was the reporter that uncovered the biggest contractor fraud scheme in the country's history with $1 trillion being spent over twenty years. Now he had to ask whether or not I am a child molester.

"I don't exactly like the fact that I have to consider questions about this incident as serious journalism either." He nodded at me in agreement.

"Just one last thing, and it's not about the photos."

That's odd he promised to end with the photos, what else must he have.

"Does the name Roulette mean anything to you?" he asked.

"What?" I replied.

"Roulette, underground fight coordinator in the early 2000's."

"No."

"Really," he seemed intrigued by my response. "Then this wasn't you?" He proceeded to pull out his tablet.

The tablet showed old video footage. As in pre-HD. The footage looked like a low level porno. It had a bunch of costumes that I think were supposed to be supers of some sort. There was a fighting ring like the UFC octagon. Then I realized why I was being shown this. A Black Canary walked into the fighting ring.

Mom? Why would she be in this footage.

I don't speak while the footage rolls.

My mom fights an enemy who called himself KGBeast. Very dumb name. He was a good fighter though. My mom got hit a lot from KGBeast. But eventually she turned the fight around and him collapse onto the floor. Then she hit him again and the blood started to fall onto the ground. And she hit him again. And again. She was beating a unconscious if not dead body. The video then paused.

"Is this not you," Ron asked me.

"Um. Uh. I-" I was stagnant for a while. "That wasn't me." I quickly declared.

"Why were you hesitating right now?" It took me a while to come up with an answer.

"I was shocked by the footage. Can I not be shocked?" He paused for a second, clearly not believing me.

"Well this was a very productive video Ms. Canary." Ron then extended his hand. I shake it, concluding the interview.

 **UCLA FOOD COURT**

 _Jason Todd POV_

"After this explosive interview the FBI has told us that they are looking into this old fighting ring that I uncovered. It could potentially even bring felonies against Black Canary depending on the serious nature of the crime," Ron Trope told CNN from the TV in the Court.

"I gotta go I'm getting a call from my dad," Roy said. I was on my phone as well when Felicity sent me a text-despite being next to me. Does she think this is stealthy?

'U do this?' she texted.

'No.' I sent back.

"My mom's calling me I've got to take this," I told them.

"Sure thing man," Victor said.

I started calling the contact mom on my phone. I called and it started to ring. It took a while but she picked up.

"Hello Jason," her Arabic accent never changed. "What did you wish to talk about?"

She knew what I wanted to talk about. She just wanted me to ask. "Were you behind the Ron Troupe story?" I asked her.

"That's not how you ask something of someone young man."

"Please... mom."

"Yes I did release the story."

"What is it?"

"Black Canary's mom was in a... mid-life crisis. Unhappy with her lack of field work, she took a position in a underground fight club. The KGBeast had been her last as she beat KGBeast to death. Wildcat found out and had her stop being a hero."

They exiled her after she killed someone. I mean they still talked to her. Wildcat was like a father figure to Black Canary II, it's not like she was never talked to by her friends and family. It's not as though I-Black Canary one would be-was permanently ostracized from them. Right?

"Roulette of course covered up the whole thing to keep her operations in the United States going, though she eventually moved operations to Johannesburg in 2010," she revealed.

"Underneath a parking lot outside a former prison for the Apartheid regime," I said. The same one I planned to have Black Canary discover.

"Of course." Small world.

"Miss Head, your next appointment with the Prime Minister of Ireland is here," Talia's secratary said.

"I'll be right there," mom said.

"How did you discover this? It must be years old, and no way you could possible know what Black Canary one and Wildcat thought about this back then," I asked.

"Why would I need to uncover it, when my agents watched it unfold. The shadows are always not too far behind you."

"Like the ones you sent after me as janitors."

"They were there to watch you."

"They were obvious they would have gotten me spotted by Batman, HIVE, or Caulder. So get rid of the substitute teachers as well."

"Very well. Oh and Jason you should call more often." She hung up the phone.

I checked my text messages and see that Felicity has sent me 100. Literally 100. The last 80 or so seemed to be 'Are you getting this.' I check the first ones.

'Who did this?'

'Are you sure it wasn't you?'

'DONT LIE TO ME #!$%!&#'

'Is that guy actually dead'

'What happened to Black Canary?'

'Where is that place?'

'Are you getting this'

'Are you getting this.'

'Are you getting this.'

'Are you getting this.'

'Are you getting this.'

"[SIGH]," I sigh out loud. I start texting back.

'Mom was behind this, tell you later'

Well at least Black Canary's going to face murder charges. And I got Green Arrow's beard. I honestly wasn't sure how I was going to take her down. There is no way the Justice League is going to isolate her over this killing. I mean the beast was a scumbag. They would understand why she did it even if she did it. Right?

* * *

 **Not sure if I'm going to continue with the story in the present or flashback to Jason's first mission with the Team as Robin, largely because the former is taking a while and the later is partially done. Next upload could be either.**

 **Please comment.**


	12. Deathstroke Attacks

**I merged the first two chapters of this story into one (the current first chapter used to be two). Thanks for all the comments!**

* * *

Halloween: Team Year Six

 **METROPOLIS**

 _Deathstroke POV_

I look over the city from the top of the LexCorp tower one. Might not work for Lex, but at least I learned how to move around Metropolis without having Superman listen in when I worked for him.

"Attention all squads." I say into my communicator. "On the west coast people were heading out for their lunch around now. On the East Coast those who haven't left lunch were leaving right now. Massive crowds in restaurants should be the easiest target. Major office buildings of Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, and other major companies will also be big targets. Colleges too. Predictably the Justice League will swoop in to save the day. The goal is to distract them as long as possible."

"RODGER!" All squads confirm.

"Zeta squad are you deployed," I said with my communicator set to only Zeta's frequency.

"[Breathing]" I heard heavy breathing through the communicator. "Yeah. YEAH! I can feel the power!" My squad leader said.

"How many survived the toxin?"

"[Heavy Breathing] [Heavy Breathing] [Heavy Breathing] [Heavy Breathing] [Heavy Breathing] [Heavy Breathing]"

"Zeta leader!" I hope to shock him out of the high of Crane's new gas.

"15!" he said suddenly. Damn, Scarecrow and Sivana said he brought the survival levels for his NEOHUMANS up to 30% yet it's only gone up to 15%.

"Focus on the down town shopping are and spread out from there." It took a while for the leader to respond.

"Affirmative." The drugs still seriously go to their heads, but at least they're submissive.

I change the frequency on my communicator. "Darhk, all 25 squads are ready," I tell my boss.

"Very well Alpha Squad... or just one guy. Alpha-male," Darhk told me.

"Hilarious," I say changing the frequency.

I check my watch. 1:59. I switch my communicator to talk with all squads.

"All-Two squads prepare to bomb, each One-squad will attack 15 minutes apart starting with Beta. After two hours two squads at once." That should mean that all 26 squads will be attacking at the end of 4 hours. That's when I'll begin my attack.

"RODGER!" Every squad told me.

I check my watch again. 2:00.

"[BOOM]" the bomb went off. I look down. I think that killed one person instantly and injured at least 13 others. Superman should be here soon, but he can't see me. It shouldn't take him too long to check on everyone and focus on the cities that experiences greater damage. I check the cameras to see the other bombs.

Seattle. Check. Gotham. Check. Indianapolis. Mexico City. Central City. Portland. Check. Check. Check. Check. I scan through the rest of them. They have all gone off. Except Los Angeles. Los Angeles? I instantly hit my communicator.

"Oscar-Two come in," I ask. I wait a second. "Oscar-Two?"

I hear the communicator disconnect, which means somebody destroyed it. Somebody interfered with my plans. No matter. It was just one city, meaning they worked alone. Shouldn't interfere with my plans.

Though it couldn't help to reinforce LA.

Twenty Minutes Ago

 **LOS ANGELES**

 _Jason POV_

"Why are we going to brunch?" I ask Holly and Dawn.

"Because we all have Wednesday off and we all also need to get costumes," Dawn told me.

"I'm not wearing last year's costume, not after what you did to it," Dawn said, pointing at her sister. Holly evilly smiled.

"What is it? What did Holly do? And how can I get you to wear it?" I ask.

"Don't take her side!" Dawn yells.

"So why did you bring us along?" Roy asks. The train came to a stop and we all exited.

"Is this a double date? Because brunch is basically a couples thing," I said. Dawn then tried to punch me but I caught her hand.

"NO!" Dawn yelled blushing and breathing deeply. The rest of us just smirk while I let go of her hand. "Because you two said that you guys don't have costumes."

"And knowing your tastes, you will probably pick something that makes you two look like idiots," Holly followed up.

"Really why don't I pick out our costumes now," I challenged them. The girls seemed ready to laugh. "Roy will be Speedy and you two will be Hawk and Dove-" I pointed at Holly and Dawn. "-and I will be Robin."

Roy keeps a poker face when I suggest he puts on his old costume. He assumes I don't know. Holly and Dawn on the other hand are awkwardly looking at the ground. They didn't think their hero identity made news outside their DC suburb. From the looks of it they were never even accused of being superheroes in the past.

"What? You don't like my suggestions," I mock them.

"Nah, every kid in Star City did Speedy growing up there. Including me," Roy admitted.

"What about you two? Going dress up as home town heroes?" I ask them.

"I-Um-Uh-Should-," Dawn was speechless.

"Same as Roy, Holly and I went as Hawk and Dove two years ago," Holly spilled.

"Who are Hawk and Dove?" Roy asks.

"Oh. Can I see photos?" I ask with intrigue. Holly and Dawn were not happy with these questions.

"They're not on my-"

"Ahhhh." Both Holly and Dawn gave out a small burst of pain. That can only mean one thing. Their sensory abilities allowed them to detect when danger approaches. I help Holly up while Roy helps Dawn.

"Hey are you alight?" Roy asked. I start looking around to see if there is anything I would recognize. There was one guy in a hood and trench coat that caught my eye. It was the tattoo on his face that caught my attention. It was a Cult of Kobra symbol.

That can't be right. When was Kobra ever a threat rather than a nuisance. And I don't think Kobra ever put a tattoo on their faces. This is as though they are trying to scream, "I am a member of Kobra."

Great he's walking past us. As he gets behind me I fall into him pretending to be unable to hold Holly. "Sorry," I told him as he walked by. I picked his wallet. But when brushing against him, I felt something metallic through his coat. Meaning maybe he's got a bomb. Great.

"Dawn and I are going to go to the bathroom and try to deal with this headache," Holly said.

"How does going to a bathroom help with a headache?" Roy asked. We all ignore his question.

"Roy head to the brunch place, I gotta take this call," I tell Roy. "Tell them two couples." Dawn tried to run at me only to be restrained by her sister.

The three of us just ditch Roy on the street.

I start using my phone to gain access to the cities camera network. After I'm in I realize that if I'm going to work in the open durring the day, I need a costume.

I walk into a Target on the street. There should be something helpful here. If I'm going to be a hero, better look the part. I pick a red jacket with a hood. I start to walk towards the checkout isle when I see a Robin costume.

Eh. Why not!

I also grabbed the tags off two equally priced items. I'll pay the same amount in the self checkout isle, but if Batman looks for somebody who bought a Robin costume and a red jacket, he won't be able to use receipts to track me. I was initially surprised by how many idiots can be found by tracing their costume parts.

I jump onto the top of a building and put on the mask and the jacket. I also looked at the R logo on the costume. Couldn't hurt to put it on. I put on the chest piece and open the zipper on the jacket to show the symbol. I put on my utility belt as well. Never leave home without that!

I pause for a second to wait for Batman. I realize that I work solo now, just... being in the costume brought up some nostalgia.

I pulled out my computer to see where the Kobra guy was. I put a tracker on the guy when I stole his wallet. I checked the ID in the wallet. Elliot Zien. Lives at a house in San Francisco? Why would he be here in Los Angeles? Arms collection? Meeting? Girlfriend?

There's no Kobra activity in LA. Not since the Justice League kicked them out three years ago anyways. Didn't even need the Arkham Knight armor. Just took a red bandana, a black hoddie, and a pistol. Guys bolted faster than the Flash.

He's clearly not a high level Kobra operative since they would have had guards around him if he was. Maybe they lowered standards for how their men should travel.

I text Felicity to get to the tower quickly as I'm going to start sending her data.

He seems to be heading to Northridge Fashion Center. That's a populated mall so he's probably picked it as a target. Another signal appears on my computer. It's the girls, Holly and Dawn, or Hawk and Dove, are racing to intercept him. I tagged Holly when she fell down. They will probably take a while to scan for him, but the rookies will probably fight him in public. They may have been heroes for two years but they continue to make the same mistakes I made in my first month. "[SIGH]."

There's an abandoned building on the route he is taking. Better drag him there before the rookies create a public scene.

I start jumping rooftop to rooftop and I've forgotten how good this feels. The armor on my Arkham Knight Armor prevents the wind from hitting me directly, but that gives me an added sense of thrill and adventure. I almost jump through the construction building rather than wait for the guy. I jump a few stories down to ground level but stay out of the light. The girls are still a few blocks away, probably still searching for the guy. He will walk by soon. I look back at my computer and the guy will move in front of me in 15 seconds. I look around and grab the metal bar to my side. I see the Kobra guy walking by and throw the bar hitting him in the head. "Who the hell threw that!" The guy yelled. He looked at me and saw my face, but couldn't make it out because of the hood. I retreated behind a pillar. "Get back here you #$$hole." He ran into the building.

He looked behind to pillar to see I wasn't there. When he was looking around, I fired a grappling hook bringing him to me further into the building. He was bound by the grappling hook ropes and on the ground when I punched his stomach with an EMP in my hands deactivating the bomb he attached to himself. "Now punk, tell me what you were doing here," I ask the Kobra guy.

"I'm here to kill you," he told me with a sadistic smile. I looked down then his hands started to glow blue. I dropped him and energy bolts dropped out of his hands. I did a back-flip to jump away from the guy. He threw out a bunch of energy bolts in random directions, meaning that he didn't have good control over his powers. "KOBRA KOBRA KOBRA KOBRA KOBRA KOBRA KOBRA KOBRA," he said as a chant.

Ok this guy is clearly trying to frame Kobra. Now that begs the question: Who is he actually working for?

The guy fires again hitting one of the support beans. This is a building in development, the support may not be ready to deal with support beam failures. Plural.

I pullout a straightjacket-shuriken. I throw and hit him with it, entrapping his boddy in a metallic staightjacket (full body, guy looked like a mummy).

"There Dove," I hear behind me. I turn around to see Holly Granger AKA Hawk and her sister Dawn Granger AKA Dove. Endowed with mystical powers form the Lords of Order and Chaos, they have the ability to transform into their superhero identities when danger is nearby. And they have mistake me for the danger that the fake-Kobra guy presented.

Hawk charged at me. Grabbing me and hitting me into a wall. "Prepare to go down scumbag." Hawk holds me against the wall and brings her fist back.

I activate a smoke grenade.

"[Cough] [Cough]." As Hawk coughs, I sneak out of the cloud. But as soon as I get out I hear her sister.

"Stop or else!" Dove told me. Or else? Or else what? She's nowhere near scary enough to leave a threat up to my imagination. Can she not come up with anything scary?

"[sigh] Sure," I tell Dove. I then get onto my knees and hold my hands behind my head. Dove looks surprised. Hawk comes out of the smoke and looks at me in disbelief.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Your sister defeated me," I told her with a smile.

"Really!" she said in surprise and disbelief.

"HEY!" Dove yelled, clearly insulted by her sister's lack of faith in her. "I'm a hero too!"

"Anyways you two see that guy I trapped to my left," I tell them. They turn around to see the fake-Kobra guy struggling in the restraints. "He claims to be the member of a terror cell Kobra. He's probably the one who set off your mystic powers not me." Dove looked at her sister.

"Then why didn't you say anything when Hawk attacked you?" Dove asked.

"Hard to say anything when you are being slammed against a wall." Dove looked at me in agreement.

"Don't listen to him Dove he may be lying," Hawk said.

"Like that girl you hung off the Washington Monument," Dove said in a passive aggressive tone.

"Hey in my defense she was super shady!" As she said that the Kobra guy fired energy bolts at all sides.

"TAKE COVER!" I yell at them.

"ALL OF YOU DIE!" fake-Kobra guy yelled.

He fired a bunch of blasts everywhere. Some of them formed waves. It hit some more pillars, which we may all want to panic about soon. One of them is about to hit Hawk so I jump onto her to hide us on the ground behind some wood. The wood isn't tall enough for us to stand up without being hit with energy blasts we see go above us. We both look down and see that I've got her pinned to the ground in a compromising position.

"Sorry wouldn't do that if I didn't have to," I tell Hawk about our predicament.

"Given the circumstances or ever, because I can think of one circumstance that I would like this," she tells me.

"Just one?" I ask as I throw a shuriken over the wood. I don't think that it will hit fake-Kobra guy but I don't need it to.

"What was that intended to do?" Hawk asks.

"What are you two doing?!" Dove asks in shock. She's hiding behind a pillar, looking at me pin down her sister.

"What does it look like Dove?" Hawk said in a voice that implies adult stuff. Dove starts to blush.

"Dove grab him when he's distracted by the hologram. Make sure his hands are pointing upwards. I'll take him out," I instruct Dove.

"What hologram?" Dove asks.

"I am J'onn J'onzz of Mars-" my hologram from the shuriken keeps going as the fake-Kobra guy keeps blasting bolts through it. "-you have no chance surrender now."

"That hologram," Dove realizes.

Dove starts running towards Kobra guy and I follow behind her. She grabs his arms and holds them up in the air firing the energy blasts at the ceiling. I pull out a taser and fire at him. He falls to the ground easily. Hawk walks over and we surround him.

"What is this guy?" Hawk asks.

"He claims to be a member of Kobra," I respond. I pull out a needle.

"What are you doing?"

"Sedating him."

"Why?" Dove asks.

"In case he wakes up." That was partially true. My sedative also had a tracker that can last up to a month, meaning that if anybody tries to bust this guy, I'll follow him.

"Who are you anyways?" Hawk asks.

" I am... hmmmm-" I start thinking because I hadn't figured out how they should refer to me. "-mmm. Just call me Red Robin." I say pointing to my Robin costume.

"Do you work with Batman?" Dove asked.

"I used to, but not anymore." I look over and see that the building was uneven. "You two have super strength."

They look at each other. "Yes?" curious for why I am asking. I point to the ceiling.

"This building is going to collapse soon! Hold up that floor while I reinforce the structure."

The two girls look over and see the ceiling tilt. "On it!" Hawk said.

The girls get to work and hold up the ceiling. I don't think using the glue grenades on the destroyed pillars will be enough.

"Red Robin!" I hear Dove yell. "Problem!"

"What?" I ask.

"Our powers are going away!" Well that's a problem.

"You guys get powers when there is a threat nearby right." I continue to fix the pillars.

"Yes," Hawk replied. She starts to fall down a bit with the building's top floors coming down with her.

"Isn't this building falling over a threat." The two girls look at each other, before nodding in agreement.

"Dove!" Dove said.

"Hawk!" Hawk said at the same town.

They were covered in a beam of light that surrounded their bodies. When the light faded away their costumes were restored from any battle damage. They then pushed the building up a bit.

"Do you two have to say that every once in a while to keep your powers?" I ask them.

"No, but if the threat passes and a new one appears we have to reaffirm," Dove explained.

"Hey how did you know about our danger transformation!" Hawk yelled at me. Dove came to the realization that I know more than I should.

"John Constantine," I say.

"What?" Hawk said.

"I'll introduce you one day."

I use some glue grenades to create artificial walls. Have to spread them out as much as possible because I don't know where the supports bellow us are.

"Alright come down," I tell them. The two come down gracefully, as if holding up the building required little effort.

"Thanks. What's Kobra by the way?" Hawk asks.

"Terrorist Cult, specializes in a bunch of illegal-" I'm cut off by a familiar voice.

"Oscar-Two come in," I hear that voice. I look over and see a communicator on the ground. I walk past the girls and grab the communicator. "Oscar-Two?" DEATHSTROKE. I crush the communicator in my hand. I don't want to let him know I'm on to him, but that somebody is. He will probably send somebody to LA to defeat which ever hero did this. Luckily I know some heroes that can fill in for me.

"What was that?" Dove asks.

"The real mastermind behind this," I tell the girls as they start to pay closer attention. "Basically a different criminal organization is trying to mislead the Justice League by launching these attacks with a bunch of people pretending to be Kobra agents."

"What would the purpose of that be?" Hawk asks.

"If I knew that I'd be stopping them. But his minion had a bomb on him." I point to the deactivated bomb. "Meaning he was trying to bomb something. The voice said that this man was Oscar-Two. That means there are at least 15 other bombers out there." I pull up my computer and start scanning through the Brother to see LA. There doesn't appear to be any other bombs going off in the city.

"WHAT! How do you know there are 15 more guys?!" Dove asks.

"Oscar is NATO-phonetic for o. One letter per team is military standard. Generally Greek alphabet but he may be using a Latin alphabet. O is the 16th letter of the alphabet." They seem to have taken in my lesson on operational procedures.

"Then they must be attacking elsewhere. We should head out!" Hawk says.

"They aren't attacking in LA. I've got nothing in the cities security system. I'll check other cities." My computer access's the Brother national system, and I'm stunned by what appears before me. There must be at least 25 cities experiencing a bombing. I show them on an expanded hologram.

"Oh my god!" Dove said.

"Holy $#%&!" Hawk said.

"Mexico City. Ottawa. Dakota. Gotham. Houston. These guys attacked 25 major cities across North America."

"We have to go help them," Hawk said trying to fly away.

"Wait! We should stay in LA."

"Why we've already stopped the bomber here, there may be others."

"No this is just the first wave. The guy in charge isn't doing this for kicks, he's after something physical. Meaning that this first wave is a distraction of some sort, and there may be a second longer one incoming."

"How do you know that?" Dove asked.

"Deathstroke's done this before. I think of it as a Bait-and-take, classic con. Used to run it when I was a kid. Blow something up, push someone over, burn something down and have everyone go to the sites of the chaos. But the trick is to have more than one distraction to have them run in a bunch of diffrent places while you get away with the main target."

"You were a thief?" Hawk asks.

"I was 7 and on the streets of Gotham, I was playing sport not thieving," I proudly declared. "We are probably not going to be enough though." I start calling someone on my phone. He picks up. "Arsenal come meet me at the abandoned UCLA Volta Dorm."

 **STAR CITY**

 _Arrowette POV_

I can't believe it. Mediterranean Cafe was bombed. I've been to this place for years. Dad used to meet journalistic sources here. Both Roys also used this place when they were kids. Yet today somebody decided to blow it up. The owner was injured in the explosion. Green Arrow and I were helping people out of the restaurant.

It wasn't just the restraunt that got blown up, the entire apartment complex above it was structurally damaged. People still needed to be evacuated. But even then there are already 15 dead and over 100 injured.

"Well what do you think little girl," Green Arrow asks me.

"Let's make them pay," I say in a deep, vengeance filled voice. Working on my Batman impression. "Hey I'm 16. I'm not a little girl!" I complain in my normal voice, giving him light punches to the shoulder.

"Yeah I um... never got a chance to call you that," Green Arrow said. Why would he want to call me a little girl? Things have been really weird ever since those Black Canary videos got online. It's not just him, Tigress, Red Arrow, and Arsenal have been trying to avoid conversations or have just been awkward when talking about me.

"Listen GA, I need to ask you-" I was cut off by a small earthquake. I almost lost my balance.

"THE OLD SHALL REPLACE THE NEW," some guy yelled. I look over and he was in street clothes. His face was orange and hands in the air. He started banging his hands against the ground, each hit caused the ground to shake. I instinctively grab my bow and shoot an arrow at him. It goes past him and hits the ground behind him. "Ha you miss-"

"[BOOM]"

He was cut off by my explosive arrow. He flew into the air, hit the ground, and was knocked out.

"Good choice little girl," Green Arrow said.

"Thanks!" I say in an enthusiastic voice. "Hey what did I just tell you!" I complained. Green Arrow started laughing.

"Better go tie up that-" Green Arrow was cut off by a fire ball thrown at us.

"Fool," some chic said. I look over and there are five people. The chic is on fire wearing burned clothes. Another is very scaly. The third has 18 eyes all over his body. The fourth has a brain visible to all. The last one seemed to be all bone. The bone person threw a projectile made out of bones at me. GA and I jump behind a car to take cover. All civilians had gotten off the streets when the earthquake guy started.

"Green Arrow to Justice League, Arrowette and I are under attack by 6 meta-humans, one down," Green Arrow said into his communicator. "But there are still people trapped in an apartment complex that was attacked earlier. and many more are under rubble."

"Batgirl to Green Arrow and Arrowette, I have visual on you two. We're stretch thin due to the other attacks and generic chaos caused by the mass bombings, but can anybody spare?" Batgirl responded.

"Batgirl, Lagoon Boy and I can assist," Aquaman said. "Five minutes out."

"Lantern here, I'm 2 minutes out," Hal Jordan says. "Will try to get the people out before fighting the super villains."

"Got it," Batgirl says. "Arrows I've got the Brother scanning for where these guys came from."

"What is it?" I say as GA and I fire explosive Arrows to try and keep the guys back.

"I've run a scan of these six. Only two of them can be scanned: the 18-eyes and brain guys and they came into contact with three of the bombers two years ago."

"Meaning that these Meta-humans are connected to the bombers," Aquaman said.

"Bingo. Now the real question is: Who are these guys and what do they want?"

"That's two questions," I correct Batgirl.

 **HALL OF JUSTICE**

 _Batman POV_

"Batgirl what's going on?" I ask Batgirl.

"The attacks have occurred in 25 North American cities," Batgirl explained. "Three of the people we think are the bombers are connected to two of the Meta-humans currently attacking Green Arrow and Artemis."

"Do they need back up?"

"No, Aquaman and Lagoon Boy are en route."

"How many heroes are on active duty?"

"Everyone except Wonder Woman, Captain Atom, Black Canary, and us two. Even Lieutenant and Sergeant Marvel and Red Arrow are helping out."

"I'm here Batgirl," Wonder Woman said.

"We can't use Captain Atom and Black Canary," Batman said. "Tell them to use civilian identities and help. No costumes for those two."

"Rodger-" Batgirl stopped and looked at the computer. "Flash what's up."

"We need help! Eight Metas on my-AHHHH" Flash screamed at the end.

"FLASH!" Batgirl and I yell.

"He has felt the mode, need to get him to a hospital," Kid Flash said in a panic. "We really need help. Make these guys feel the mode."

"I'm sending Wonder Woman and Batman." Batman and Wonder Woman start running down the hallway.

"Batgirl, get into the field as soon as Snapper comes to take over Ops Management," I ordered. She quickly nodded.

An Hour Later

 **UCLA VOLTA DORM**

 _Red Robin POV_

"Who are you guys?" Arsenal asks. "And how do you know me?"

"These are Hawk and Dove, the sisters who got mystic powers from the Lords of Chaos and Order. We met an hour ago," I explain. "I'm Red Robin."

"Are you a Bat?" Arsenal asks. Guess they just refer to any ex-Batman sidekick as a Bat now. When I was Robin it was just me and Nightwing, and even then the latter would do anything to distance himself from Batman.

"Was. But now I'm dead to Batman and the Justice League." Everybody looks at me in confusion with that statement. "It's kind of a long story and if you meet the League please don't talk about me. I'd rather confront them on my terms." That was all true. I would rather confron the League on the terms of my revenge.

They all seemed to reluctantly understand.

"Ok so you know me through Batman. Then what did you want to talk about?" I pull up a hologram of the fake-Kobra bomber.

"Arsenal, the three of us stopped a suicide bomber, who Hawk and Dove gave to police with the disarmed bomb. He was being commanded by Deathstroke." The computer showed Deathstroke. Arsenals eyes widened.

"So Luthor's behind this." He declared slamming his robotic arm against the wall.

"No, Deathstroke's stint with the Light was infiltration for a different organization."

"What?" Arsenal seemed confused.

"Deathstroke is not working for the Light but a different criminal enterprise."

"What criminal enterprise?" This time the question came from Hawk. They all look at me with intrigue.

"Sorry not going to say," they all looked at me with distrust after saying that. "I don't want anyone, not the League, not the Light, not you guys confronting them head on. It would be very-VERY destructive."

"Very egotistic to think that you can single-handedly take down this organization." Arsenal said in cynicism. "I assume you have a better plan to bring these guys down?"

"No." I admit, Arsenal smiles in victory. "But my method hasn't World War 3."

"What makes you think these guys can start WW3?"

"Because they started WW1." Arsenal seemed to not believe me, but Hawk and Dove showed surprise. I have the computer bring up the other bombings. "These other bombers successfully detonated attacks in 25 cities. The League has begun response but several of them came under attack by meta-humans in 6 cities, each exactly 15 minutes apart, starting 15 minutes after the initial bombing. Indicating that this is a coordinated attack meant to draw attention throughout the night."

"You mean this is all a distraction!" Dove seemed shocked by my suggestion.

"Yeah. Its going to be A Long Halloween. Unfortunately for us stopping the bomber might have brought more attention to LA."

"You mean stopping a criminal might bring more problems," Hawk said unbelieving.

"One of Deathstroke's bombs didn't go off. He's going to send more people as a distraction."

Arsenal looks at some of the footage of Green Arrow and Tigress under attack from 10 meta-humans. "How did he get all these meta-humans?" Arsenal asks. I show a picture of Scarecrow and Dr. Sivana.

"Scarecrow developed a modified version of his fear toxin, possibly with Dr. Sivana. It can temporarily develop a person's meta-abilities but only 10% of them survive the process. Though that rate is from a while ago and he may have improved."

"Wait these guy can make a super powered army at will!" Dove asked in shock.

"How did he find the volunteers?" Arsenal asked.

"Brainwashing via old League of Shadows techniques," I tell them. "Among these 10%, none have lived longer than 24 hours. Thus using the toxin to create a permanent army might not be possible. Think of them more like guns that can only ever be fired once"

"What about the guy we just caught?" Dove asked.

"He hasn't died... yet." She looks down uncomfortably at my statement.

"Why did you have us give him to the cops instead of a hospital?!" Dove said in concern.

"We had to put the cops in the loop about threats to LA and a hospital can't help him, but at least there will be no murder accusations. Here." I give them all circular devices with a black glass top and a yellow exterior. "This a communicator, my associate Oracle will give you instructions on whoever Deathstroke sends to town."

"You aren't going to help us," Hawk complains.

"Somebody's got to go after Deathstroke."

"Why not contact the League?" Arsenal asks.

"One I've personal beef with him, second the I'm dead to Batman and for now I want it to stay that way, and third the League is already going to be stretched thin across North America and given their paternalistic behavior they would stretch themselves further by sending reinforcements, who are more like babysitters." Arsenal looks at me in agreement. "You three are going to protect Los Angeles."

"Sounds more like you're having us protect LA because of a personal agenda," Arsenal says critically. I shrug jumping out an open widow, leave them to protect LA. "At least he seems somewhat honest about his intentions."

Twenty Minutes Later

 **THE TOWER**

I walk into The Tower and see Oracle at her computer. Must have left half-way through her bio class.

"You following the news?" I ask.

"Yeah," she responds, still shocked by what happened. "25 cities attacked. Luckily LA was spared."

"Not luck, Hawk, Dove, and I stopped the bomber for Los Angeles." I started putting on my Arkham Knight armor. The magnetic attach already had the arm and leg components on.'

"You teamed up with Holly and Dawn!"

"Well their power's went off in the middle of the street and that helped me find the guy who was trying to set off the LA bomb."

"Did they change into costume in the middle of the street?"

"Nah they just got a headache and collapsed."

"What were you doing with them?"

"Oh Holly, Dawn, Roy, and I went on a Double Date. Got canceled because of this though." Felicity blushed at my statement.

"Ok! So who is behind this?"

"The guy was disguised as a Kobra agent, but he was actually working for Deathstroke, and by extension HIVE."

"WHAT!" she was shocked by my statement.

"He tried to contact the bomber, but I heard his voice through the communicator."

"Then the Meta-humans attacking Star City, Central City, Seattle, Blüdhaven, New York, and Dallas are from the NEOHUMAN project."

"They also begun attacking Mexico City." My armor was fully on and voice scrambler turned on. "Here I took this off the LA bomber." I gave her the wallet from the Kobra guy. "Pull up the address on the drivers license." She starts hacking. Eventually she is able to pull up his address and his co-owners.

"I have that he owned it with 3 other people. No jobs, no bank accounts, no tax records, only driver's license. They're ghosts."

"Check with the Brother." She scans images on their drivers licenses to the Brother.

"Got something."

"What?"

"His co-owners on his house they're the other bombers." I look at her computer.

"Which cities?"

"Tijuana, Star City, and New York City." She pulls up video footage of them leaving bombing targets in those cities.

"Show me the images before and after they entered," I ask of her. She gets to work and has them for me quick.

"Here." I see the footages before me

"Their all wearing the same trench coat, the one that had the bomb on the LA bomber. That must be where the bombs were hidden." I start heading out.

"Where are you going?" she asks me.

"I'm heading to their San Francisco house, send the Armory."

"So that's what you are calling the ship."

"Yes. Also keep into contact with Roy, Holly, and Dawn."

"So are the five of us going to be a team. A Challengers of the Unknown."

"That's already taken."

"SERIOUSLY! Why are all the good names taken?" she sulks. "What should we call ourselves?"

"The team once considered a formal name, I voted for Donna's Teen Titans. Ended in a three way tie between Justice Beyond, Young Champions, and New Challengers. So how about the Titans." Felicity shrugs.

"I can work with that." She turns on the communicator to talk to the Titans. "Arsenal, Hawk, and Dove nice to meet you. I'm the Oracle."

"Who?" Hawk asks.

"Oracle. Expert computer hacker and technology manager."

"And we should trust you because..." Arsenal asked.

"Because she is going to show you where to kick #$$," I tell Arsenal.

"Language," Oracle reminds me. Of course I'm going to ignore her, but she says it anyways. "I've got eight people in a Deathstroke mask taking over the Staples Center, looks like they are all Meta-humans asking for attention."

"I'm sending you the Armory."

"The what?" Arsenal asks.

"My ship, it's filled with weapons. Use them as you see fit."

"Thanks I guess Red Robin," Arsenal tells me turning off his communicator.

"What do we do with these guys when we take them down?" Hawk asks.

"Take off the mask and show them to a camera," I instruct them. "Oracle will then be able to run facial recognition to see if they have any other associates we should worry about."

"And we should trust the intel we get because..." Arsenal asks.

"You have any better idea for how to go about this." Arsenal was silent about that.

"Sounds like a plan Red Robin," Dawn said as the communicator went off.

"Red Robin?" Oracle asks with a smile. "Please spill."

"Later," I say as I leave for San Francisco.

Ten Minutes Later

 **OUTSIDE STAPLES CENTER**

 _Arsenal POV_

"This better be worth it," I grumble out loud. I don't know this guy. Even if he is a real Bat (I don't even know if that is true), but here I am waiting on his girlfriend to deliver a bunch of weapons (that for all I know won't work) for me to fight eight Deathstroke trained Meta-humans.

"He hasn't stirred us wrong yet," Dove said, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"He didn't seem so bad," Hawk said.

"That's because you got to second base with him," Dove grumbled.

"Of course you think shoulder touching is second base."

"Titans come in," the communicator chic asks.

"What are the Titans?" I ask her.

"That's our superhero team name," she says with enthusiasm.

"Well better than just the team." I admit.

"Where are these weapons you promised us?" Hawk asks. "And it better not be protest signs."

"Hey those worked perfectly fine," Dove complained to her sister.

"Once," Hawk painfully admitted.

"Still."

"Look up," she instructed us. We look up and see nothing. Then something starts to phase into existence. Stealth tech must be deactivating. I see a large ship, can probably carry 10 people, the exterior arms look impressive, but they're no model I am familiar with. I take the initiative and walk into the ship.

I am constantly enthralled by the weapons.

"Damn," I say out loud with my eyes widening. "What's your name again?" I ask the communicator lady.

"Oracle," she responds.

"Thank you Oracle. Alien, Atlantean, even Themysciran. Where did you get these guns?"

"What are those?" Hawk whispers to her sister.

"Atlantean refers to Atlantis home of Aquaman. Themysciran refers to Themyscira the home of Wonder Woman," Dove tells Hawk.

"So these weapons are good?" Hawk asks in confusion.

"The best," I say as I gaze through the weapons with awe. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you," I say out loud as I pet a Atlantean rocket launcher. "I love you," I say as I cradle the weapon. The girls just look at me creeped out.

* * *

 **This arc will probably be a couple more chapters, then I'm going to do more flashbacks.**


	13. Deathstroke Attacks 2

Thirty Minutes Later

 **STAR CITY**

 _Arrowette POV_

"STOP OR ELSE I'll-" one of the villains tried to yell. The dog he was holding onto was let go as he fell to the ground. He was turned silent when a blunt arrow hit him in the face and he collapsed onto the floor. It wasn't my arrow, and GA is intoxicated (one of these guys had the power to make people drunk) and currently being taken to the Hall of Justice. I turn around and see Red Arrow jump down.

We thought there was only five of these guys, but an hour later more showed up. Even more in other cities across the country. This idiot has the ability to mess with the color spectrum. Basically he was going around town turning everything red, pink, or orange, which you think is useless until you become very nauseated at the constant change of color. Which is why Green Arrow started looking like Cupid 15 minutes ago. I already sent photos to everybody.

"Need help," Red Arrow asks.

Its been two hours. But this defeated that last of these freaks who attacked us.

"Yeah," I say very dizzy. I start to fall and Lagoon Boy catches me. "Thanks Red Arrow."

"Don't mention it. Where's Green Arrow?" Red Arrow asked.

"Being sent to the Hall of Justice," Aquaman said. "One of the adversaries intoxicated him during the battle." Red Arrow's eyes grew at Aquaman's words. "It's not what you're thinking, though I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet."

"It was either going to be GA getting drunk on the job or GL-one."

"50 bucks on GA," I say.

"Your on!" Red Arrow responds. We shake hands on out bet.

"You think highly of your mentor," Lagoon Boy pointed out.

"You should see what I get him for father's day."

"You get him something for father's day?" I ask Roy. He was silent for a while as if he was hiding something. Why are so many people in my life acting like that right now?

"Yeah, I mean... he's more than earned it," Roy awkwardly said. "I mean... were you ever thinking about doing that?" he asked.

"Um... Hadn't really thought about that. Unless he actually turned out to be my dad." I joked. Roy awkwardly laughs.

"Ha... Ha... Ha..." WHAT IS EVERYONE HIDING FROM ME? They say alcohal is the truth serum, and GA just had a lot of that.

 **SAN FRANCISCO**

 _Arkham Knight POV_

"Oracle are you getting the drone footage," I ask Oracle. I had sent five drones to the outside of the house. Several of the bombers came out of this house... after entering over a year ago. There is a community security camera system connected to the Justice League's Brother system.

"Initial scans are coming in right now," Oracle responds.

"How come the Brother hasn't suggested this place as a location of interest to the Justice League."

"The Brother is connecting each of the bombers to fake identities."

"Which means the 'President' has arranged for more confusion into the system." So long as HIVE has the president, the government's assets are HIVE's assets. Oracle was probably feeling guilty given her role in making Maxwell Lord, President Jonathan Horne.

"Final scans on the house are complete," she said in a sad voice.

"Anything I should know about the house." Upper-class neighborhood in Silicon Valley. Surrounded by civilian homes, better try to keep any fighting in the house. There's a front door, a backdoor, and 16 window entrances.

"All windows and doors have a explosive set to blow when one opens."

"That's a problem," I understate. "What about the walls?"

"What about them?"

"What if I blow up the walls?"

"In broad daylight. Um.. maybe?" Oracle said with uncertainty. "Just stay back when you blow up the wall."

I moved on the house. All the traps are placed in the house rather than on the lawn. Probably not to draw attention when a drunk teenager falls on the lawn and his guts are found on the sidewalk. I look at the doors and windows trying to find the where there is the most distance between any potential explosive rigged to the building. I see an spot on the second floor. I use the thruster pack to have me float above the air long enough to place explosive-gel on the wall. I then walk out into the street and set off the explosive.

I see the wall come down. I wait a second on the street.

"I'm not seeing the whole house explode on the drones, so 9 in 10 chance it's safe," Oracle says.

"That one being the time I did die in an exploding building," I respond.

"Well then don't make it 9 in 11. Got to go, another batch of Deathstroke's minions are about to attack the LA ports."

"Well I guess I have to share you now." Oracle signs off.

I jump up into the building. The first thing I did was go through the house to deactivate any explosives. Better let the Justice League know to search this place once I'm done. After casing the place for bombs, I check their rooms. I walk into every room. The bedrooms are all more like barracks. Bedding is all the same, clothes have minimal differences (all the same brand just different colors), no wall paper, books, or anything else. I check the pantry and find a lot of stock food with Amazon Prime boxes. Seems more like these guys were being stored here like pets. This place doesn't even have internet.

How were they receiving instructions?

Teleporting? One of Darhk's powers. Psychic messaging? Possible. Birds with a letter? 50/50 chance.

I look at the ground and see that the carpet in the living room is cut up. There's something underneath this. I start hitting the ground looking for the hallow point. Takes a while because I realized they cut up all the carpet in the house. I scan the entire bottom floor until I realized they put it under the toilet. After stuffing the water connectors with ice grenades to make sure I don't get toilet water on me when I break the toilet (I'm not a plumber so this just seemed easier). I ripped up the floor to find some sort of server. I plug in to the system.

My computer shows me that its connected to a private network connected to a private satellite. Great there's a HIVE space program. Now I not only have to worry about a HIVE air force with aircraft carriers, but now space weapons. The private network has 24 other locations. There appear to be 4 other homes spread throughout North America. San Juan, Calgary, Spokane, and even Havana.

"Oracle," I contact her.

"BUSY!" she yells back at me

"WHERE IS HE SHOOTING AT ME?!" I hear Arsenal say. Must have her communications with the Titans on speaker.

"Warehouse! Two blocks north!"

"[BOOOOOOM]" I hear a lot of explosions go off.

"Oracle. I'm sending you data on the other facilities that were holding bombers," I tell her.

"Ok. I'll get to that," she responds clearly exhausted.

"Who is that?" I hear Dove ask.

"Ark-" Oracle remembers that they know me by another name. "Red Robin!" she blurts.

"His voice sounds different," Arsenal points out.

"Must be my scrambler," Oracle responds. "I just cut them off but what did you send me."

"I sent you locations for a communications server connected to a private satellite," I tell her.

"HIVE has a space program!" she says in shock.

"Apparently."

"Can we get one?"

"Maybe? I have an alien planet that owes me a favor." She thought I was joking. It takes a second for her to locate the servers.

"Ok, I've got a bunch of residential homes."

"Check the residents."

"They are the other bombers aren't they."

"You guessed it." She is silent for a second.

"How many does this bring us up to?"

"25 bombers including the one you caught with the Granger sisters."

"Hawk and Dove, on field names in the field," I reminded her. I pause for a second. "There were 26 bombers right."

"Yes. One of them seems to be missing a Daniel Neyon."

"Which city?"

"Metropolis."

"That's the city with the least casualties right."

"Yeah, only-" she paused uncomfortable with her words "-Two died, less than other attacks."

"Superman's home town gets the least destruction and the assaliant came from outside HIVE's sleeper agents. That city's the main target. Probably to get Superman out of the city as fast as possible allowing Deathstroke to steal something without setting off his hearing."

"What do you think he wants?" she asks the question as I start runing towards the nearest Zeta-Tube.

"Scan for anything Captain Marvel related."

"Think it has something to do Dr. Sivana."

"Probably the best guess. Scarecrow working for HIVE gave them the people causing chaos right now. So what does Dr. Sivana give them?"

The NEOHUMAN project was probably HIVE's most powerful weapon. The ability to raise an army of metas, even if only for a day. Apparently Scarecrow's fear toxin can activate the meta gene, by having its victims gain abilities to face their greatest fears. Though it's not enough to reshape the world the way Darhk wants to. That means he must be trying to make an even more powerful weapon.

"I've got something!" Oracle told me.

"What?" I asked.

"The spear of Adam, a lightning shaped container for the lightning of Shazam."

"Where is it?"

"STAR Labs Metropolis vault."

"On my way!" I say as I run into the Zeta-tube.

" **DESIGNATION 00. Arkham Knight"**

10 minutes later

 **STAR LABS METROPOLIS**

Well Deathstroke was here today. The trail of bodies was the most obvious reason. Front desk secretary, several guards, at least half a dozen scientists. Yeah he was here. Star Labs sent most people home after the intial bombing. There must have been the leftovers.

I walk further down the hall, both pistols in hand. eventually I enter the medical wing of Star Labs.

"Sir we have completed the sweep of the medical wing," I hear somebody say around the corner.

"Good," Deathstroke's voice came out of the communicator.

I turn my head to peak around the corner and see that the guards were putting away their communicator. Taking the opportunity I appear from behind the corner.

"Hey!" one of them yelled before I put a bullet between their eyes. I walk over and see that one of them had blue skin. Meaning he was a NEOHUMAN, probably the other one as well. I grab their communicators and take the sim-cards out and insert them into my armor.

"Beta squad, what's the status on the data recovery," Deathstroke said over the communicator.

"Sir the research is on a server in Gotham we are downloading as fast as we can but we only have 5% of the data," one of Deathstroke's goons said over the coms.

"Damn it, just get it over with!" Deathstroke cut off communications.

Are they trying to get copies of STAR Labs data and research?

The master STAR Labs server is protected by the Justice League because it holds the most advanced scientific research data in the world. Even Oracle can't hack into it, I have to use Nightwing's account (BetterThanBatman is not a good password). The server is stored in a different location every week, moved via Zeta Tube. They must have thought that the server would be here today. Scientists can use the access terminal to see Star Labs data.

I pull up a holographic map of the facility. I use the communications frequency to track where Deathstroke's goons are. There are five near the vault, two going around the facility, five are in the access terminal room. All probably have powers. I have the stealth advantage, but Deathstroke will check on his men soon.

The vault is made out of alien metal, magic, and some stuff Batman came up with. Deathstroke's not getting in for a while. Better destroy the access terminal, at least this way they can't use its research data.

I head towards the access terminal looking at the goons location on my helmet's screen. That's odd, none of them are moving. I turn my two pistols into a single assault rifle. I approach the door to the access server. The room is large dome with a bunch of cameras to record full spectrum photos of who is in this room. There's only one way in, a door that requires retinal scan. I'm just going to blow up the door.

I place an explosive on the door, step behind a wall, and let it explode. "[BOOOOOOM]."

I run into the smoke and jump into the room, gun pointed at the center server. I take a panoramic view and see that there is nobody there.

"[goraning]," I hear someone groan. I look down and see that the goons were all tied up in a black rope and unconscious but in pain. There are only a few people who have access to that equipment.

The lights go out.

I instantly turn around and have one of my all-blades appear. I see a projectile come at me. I use the sword to deflect it. Then my sword provides the only light available as a dark shadow casts over me. Only I know it's not a shadow. The shadow attempts to punch me. I deflect but the shadow and I grab each other's throats. His grip won't stop me from breathing, I made the neck piece of my armor in case somebody tried to do that.

"So..." the shadow was unable to speak completely because of the grip I had on his throat. "we meet... again... Arkham Knight." I respond quickly.

"It's been a long time Batman!"

 **WAREHOUSE DISTRICT, LOS ANGELES**

 _Arsenal POV_

"You two ok," I ask Hawk and Dove. Hawk was leaning against the wall out of breath and Dove was collapsed onto the floor.

"I [breath] can keep-" Hawk collapses and sits on the ground against a wall. "-going." she said that last part in pain.

"Oracle! How many of these guys do we have left?" We have encountered 26 super powered villains with a Deathstroke mask in the past hour. Thankfully Oracle had a lot of ammo and these guys all had mediocre powers with incompetent users.

"I've got two people coming out of a warehouse one block from here," she responds.

"You two up for that?" I ask Hawk and Dove.

"No," Dove said.

"Yes!" Hawk said, trying to stand up only to fall down again.

"Looks like it's just going to be me Oracle," I tell Oracle.

"HEY!" Hawk yelled.

"They are... falling asleep," Oracle informs me.

"What?" I ask her.

"Check your communicator."

I pull out the communicator and it turns into a computer with a holographic projector. The computer then showed video footage of two people in a Deathstroke mask running out of the facility, grabbing their heads, then falling down.

"What was that?" I ask Oracle.

"I don't know. They were grabbing their heads so psychic attack?" Oracle speculates.

"I'm going in," I declare.

"What! Alone. At least-" I turn off the communicator.

I use a grappling arrow to get the high ground and observe the warehouse from above.

Oracle probably couldn't tell from the camera footage, but several parts of the warehouse were damaged. I seemed as though a fight went on there.

Some guy emerged from the facility, trying to run into the street. I pulled out my arrow and prepare to hit him. Then a hand emerges from the facility. The hand seemed like rubber, like Plastic man. The man is then dragged into the facility. Somebody in there is fighting Deathstroke's goons in that warehouse.

I jump down and stand at the wall next to the facilities entrance. I peek in and confused by what I see.

There were two people in a Deathstroke mask being surrounded by a golden robot, a man in a weird helmet floating above the ground, one guy that looked like Clayface but a more diverse color scheme, a thirty foot tall chic, and what appeared to be someone with Plastic man's abilities. All of them were dressed in black and purple. Very odd combonation.

The two remaining Deathstroke minions fired ice and fire at the people surrounding them. They were instantly stepped on by the thirty foot chic. When she picked up her foot they seemed fine, but in definite pain. I don't think they see me so I walk towards them, arrow pointing at them.

" _Do not fear_ ," I hear a voice in my head say. I turn around and scan my surroundings. " _Doom Patrol let's introduce ourselves to our guest._ " The people who were taking out Deathstroke's goons turned around. " _I am Mento_."

The golden robot spoke first, "I'm Robotman."

The thirty foot chic then spoke, "I'm Elasti-girl."

The Clayface guy then spoke, "I'm Metamorpho."

Then the woman who seemed to have Plastic man like abilities earlier, "I'm Madam Rouge."

That last name caught my eye.

"I know you," I say pointing my arrow at her. "You used to work for Luthor!"

The rest of the so called Doom Patrol looked at her. "I was," she said. "But now, I am trying to start over."

" _Do we not all deserve a second chance?_ " Mento told me. I'll check into her later.

"Can you speak in a normal voice?" I ask him.

"He can't," Elasti-girl said. "He's mute."

"So he can only communicate telepathically?" I start to put down my bow. "I'm Arsenal, former Justice League."

"Former?" Metamorpho asks.

"I'm trying a solo act, but I just teamed up with some people to deal with Deathstroke's other minions."

"Deathstroke?" Robotman asked. Clearly these guys are new to the gig.

" _An assassin_ ," Mento spoke to us.

"So I assume you guys have also been fighting his minions all night long."

"You bet!" Robotman bragged. "Now we have taken-"

" _Robotman_ , we should not divulge information without the chief," Mento said.

"You can communicate with him telepathically," I say pointing to Robotman. "Then I'm assuming your more of a cyborg than a robot." A cyborg has a human body and can be contacted telepathically, that can't happen to a robot. Mento's eyes appeared to narrow.

" _We can talk another time_ ," Mento told me. " _For now we must go_." Then a flashing light appeared that blinded me for a few seconds. When I turned around they were gone.

I pull out my communicator. "Titans, do you copy?" I ask them

"Affirmative," I hear all the girls say.

"I've got eight Deathstroke goons here, all unconscious."

"You took them all out by yourself," Oracle said in surprise. "That impressive."

"I didn't take them out."

"Then who did?" Dove asks.

"Some guys calling themselves the Doom Patrol. Any of you ever heard of them."

"Cool name but no," Hawk said.

"Same," Dove said.

"I'm checking the internet and I don't find anything for a Doom Patrol. Maybe they're a government organization. What did they look like?" Oracle asked.

"Can I sent you a photo?" I ask Oracle.

"Is it stored on a electronic device?"

"Yes."

"Then hold the Titans communicator to the memory slot." I hold it to my mask. It's has an automatic recorder. Records everything I see. Takes up a $#!% tone of memory. And data is expensive.

"Copied and sent." That surprised me.

"That's a terabyte of data, you cannot have copied that in a few seconds."

"But I just did."

"Whose your supplier? Wayne, LexCorp, ARGUS."

"That last one better be a joke."

"What do you think?"

"I built it myself," Oracle said with pride. "Ok I can't find any of the purple and Black guys using facial recognition software or the Brother."

"Wait isn't the Brother only available to the League and the government."

"Are you surprised it's easy to hack the government." True.

"The one on the far right is a ex-criminal by the name of Madam Rouge, though she claimed that she was trying to start over."

"I'll look into it and I'll keep an eye out for these guys, but the whole city seems to be cleared of people in Deathstroke masks."

"So we saved the day," Hawk asked.

"Yes we did, good job Titans, now just take the unconscious prisoners to the police."

"So now were clean up," Dove asks.

"[sigh] Sounds like my sidekick days," I respond. "If we finish fast, I can get to a Halloween party."

* * *

 **I think I'm going to continue with the present story for about two more chapters then do a bunch of Flashbacks both after Jason was taken in by the League of Assasins and his first mission with the Team**

 **Please Comment!**


	14. Flashback: Rise of the --- ----

**Ok. Did not expect to release this chapter, was expecting to continue the main story but I'm not done with that chapter. Hopefully I'll be back to the main story soon, but here is another flashback.**

 **I might not explain this well enough durring the story, but Jason's body was seperated from his concious in Flashback: Out of His League when M'gann brain blasted him. It left him in a situation similar to Aqualad except his body can actually function. His mind meanwhile is trapped in his own subconcious similar to "The Fix" in season 2. What both are doing matter to the flashbacks.**

* * *

Flashback: After the Death of the Joker

 **PORT OF MIAMI**

 _Unknown POV_

"FREEZE!" an armed guard pointed a spear at an approaching man. The armed guard had a partner who seemed more calm.

"{Calm down brother!}" the approaching man said in Atlantean, mockingly holding his hands up. The trigger happy guard put down his weapon.

"{You fool!}" his calmer partner said as he hit him on the head with a newspaper. "{You should have assumed that no [Atlantean racist term] knew about this meeting location.}"

"{You seem too calm}," the guard responded. "{Do you not wish for King Orm to succeed?}"

"{Of course I wish to see the pretender kicked off the throne and all these [Atlantean racist term] know their role in the evolutionary hierarchy}," the calm man snapped back at his partner. "{Yet King Orm knows he must bide his time before he could launch another strike. Besides, the pretender no longer has an heir.}"

"{But he still has a wife}," the approaching man pointed out.

"{My people in the capital tell me they no longer sleep in the same room}," the calm man said. "{50 gold coins on divorce in the next three months.}"

"{50 bronze}," the approaching man said. "{I like to live dangerously, but that is a bit much for me.}"

"{Deal.}"

"{Can we focus on the issue at hand!?}" the trigger happy man asked in panic in contrast to his partners calm.

"{Very well}," the calm man said. "{What happened to Dialt?}"

"{The body was found in a box sent to the pretender's embassy}," the approaching man revealed.

"{But what happened to him?}" the trigger happy man said.

"{Believers in the true king tell me that he was tortured}," the calm man said.

"{WHAT?!}" the trigger happy man yelled in panic.

"[SLAP]"

"{Calm down!}" the calm man yelled at and slapped the trigger happy man. "{#$%^ing idiot.}" The calm man sat down. "{Who do they think it was?}"

"{The League of Shadows}," the approaching man says.

"{The who?}" the trigger happy man asked in confusion.

"{They-}" the calm man tried to say. Then the calm man was shot in the head. He was dead in an instance.

"{HOLY $#*!}" the paniced man said. The two remaining men ran down the shipyard. They passed several containers before they started talking again.

"{WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!}" the trigger happy man said.

"{He was attacked by a sniper}," the approaching man said in a calm. The trigger happy man attempted to run further before he was stopped by the approaching man.

"{Why are we staying here?! We are not mammals?!}" the trigger happy man said. The translator must be off, or the atlanten words must have no translation.

"{The sniper was on the other side of the river}," the approaching man said. "{We need to stay calm and stay under cover.}" he calmly explained to his friend. "{We can do this! For the King!}"

"[Deep breath]" the trigger happy man took a deep breath. "{For the King!}" he said with enthusiasm.

Then I activated a detonator.

The approaching man exploded from the inside. He didn't know it but I had cooked all three of his meals today with explosives.

The panicked man was probably covered in his friends guts and blood.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" he screamed in horror and ran towards the street. Luckily I set up a camera network here. I park right in front of where he will run by.

I have my car on with the lights shining on him as he runs by. Predictably he pulled out his gun and started yelling in me. "{GET OUT!}" he yelled at me in Atlantean. The target forgot to switch to English. I rolled down my window. He came to the window and started yelling at me in English. "You in the red hood, get out-" he was cut off by my taser. He fell to the ground quickly. I stuffed him in the back of the car and started to drive on the highway. Never threaten an Uber driver.

I pulled out my communicator.

"Mistress I have the target," I told my mistress.

"Very good. Bring him to Essence," mistress instructed me. "And how did I tell you to refer to me."

"Goodbye mother."

The next day

 **LOCATION UNKNOWN**

Commander Essence had me hang him from a the ceiling with metal chains around his hands. She needs her psychic subjects to be weak or willing to possible see into their minds. To weaken them I was told to use the fear toxin.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," the subject screamed. "{GET AWAY FROM ME FIRE DEMON}"

"I have extracted the information," Essence told me. I shoot the subject in the head and prepare another box to send to the Atlantean embassy. I take down the subject's hanging body.

"Where should I go commander?" I kneeled as I asked her.

"Coast City. There is a military facility there. One of Oceanmaster's subordinates is disguised as a military official."

"On it," I said standing up grabbing the keys to a League of Shadows jet.

Two Days Later

 **COAST CITY**

 _Donna Troy POV_

"Why don't you try this?" I ask Tula. I show her a pair of blue yoga pants.

"I don't think it goes well with my hair?" Tula tells me. I toss her the pants with a matching blue top. "Seriously I don't think this dark blue is for me!"

"Here just try them on," I tell Tula. Generally the sorority (that's what we heroines call ourselves) tries to have a girls-night-out, to keep close. The others couldn't come this week. Rocket had to talk with some doctors about her pregnancy, Zatanna had to collect some magic equipment, Miss Martian on a Martian holiday (something about a priestess), and Karen had work. There was Batgirl... but everybody was kind of surprised when Nightwing introduced his girlfriend (we are 100% sure he's banging her) as a superhero. Especially because Batman is still a no, on ever having another sidekick. It's really hard to blame him for thinking that. Though the public fight he had with Nightwing in the Cave was... unexpected.

 _Donna Troy Flashback_

 ** _THE CAVE_**

 _I start to walk from the kitchen to the Cave. Apparently Nightwing was announcing something. I started walking when I was joined by Kid Flash in walking down the hall to see Nightwing's surprise._

 _"So do you know what this surprise is about?" I ask Kid Flash._

 _"Nope!" he said casually chewing on som. "I thought for a second it was going to be one thing, but there's no way he was actually going to do that."_

 _"What would that be?" I ask as we walk into the main room. There we see Superboy, Artemis, Rocket, Tempest, and Black Canary were surrounding Nightwing and what appeared to be a red head in a Bat costume. I turn over and see Kid Flash in shock._

 _"He... He... He wouldn't actually..." Kid Flash mumbled in horror at what is before him. I tried to talk with him but he used his super speed to run to the center. "Hey Nightwing, I'd like to talk with you for a second." He attempted to use his super speed to take Nightwing with him, but Nightwing stopped that from happening._

 _"We can talk here," Nightwing said. "Guys I would like to introduce you to the newest member of the team, Batgirl." He pointed to the girl in the Bat-costume._

 _"Oh no." Kid Flash said looking to the ground. He seemed as though the end has appeared._

 _Everybody else had the same feeling. After what happened to Robin... the rest of us had more shock that Batman would take on another sidekick, but nobody wanted to say that out loud._

 ** _"DESIGNATION 02. BATMAN."_**

 _"Oh no." Kid Flash said as he walked as far away from Nightwing as possible._

 _Batman then appeared from the Zeta tube. There were stains of blood over the Bat-logo, and he was still not shaving completely. He started walking quickly towards Nightwing and Batgirl, shoving Tempest and Superboy out of the way._

 _"Batman, I'm glad that you could join us to help introduce-" Nightwing attempted to charismatically say. Then Batman punched him with a force that sent Nightwing's head to the ground in an instant. I think it dented the ground. Everybody was shocked by what Batman did to his former sidekick._

 _"What did I #^!%ing tell you about sidekicks. Computer," Batman said, "purge all access for Barbra Gordon on Justice League or Batcave based servers and remove administrative access to B01 Nightwing," Nightwing started to get up from the hit clearly injured from what happened. 'Batgirl' and Kid Flash tried to help him up, but he refused their help and walked towards Batman._

 _"Whatever happened to no names in the field?" Nightwing mockingly asked in pain._

 _"She's not a field agent you dumb#$$," Batman said. "There is no Batgirl."_

 _"Excuse me don't I get a say in this," Batgirl-err- Barbra attempted to complain._

 _"No. I'm in charge. I'm the #^!%ing king you dumb bitch." Everybody was somewhat surprised by the generally cool Batman go on an expletive spree._

 _"Who are you to stop me?" Batgirl attempted to fight back._

 _"The guy with your father's cellphone number Barbra," Batman snapped back in a way that reminded us that he is Batman. She looked at him in shock at the idea that he might blab to her father._

 _"You-You wouldn't-"_

 _"I would," Batman said narrowing his eyes._

 _"Then I'll tell him your secret too," she desperately blurted out. This time Batman diverted attention to Nightwing, giving him a bat gaze._

 _"So you got a blowjob and then gave up your secret identity. I'm not surprised or disappointed, because this is utterly #^$%ing predictable from you," Batman told Nightwing. Everybody else didn't say anything at the drama unfolding before us. Batman then started walking towards the Zeta-Tube._

 _"We didn't do that!" Batgirl protested._

 _"So you did it in the #$$. Whatever. Go ahead Barbra," he mocked her. "What's your father going to do? Arrest me on the word of a 17 year-old girl. One of the most powerful people on earth. Good #^$%ing luck with that, and Nightwing if you keep trying to force her on me and I'll cut off your bank account." he points to Batgirl. "And if you continue to this anyways I'll cut your line mid air and let you fall 15 stories before going splat." I look over to Artemis who mouths 'What the #^%!' to me shock. "Then you will be paralysed but not dead and not a superhero either."_

 ** _"DESIGNATION 02. BATMAN"_**

 _Batman continued to talk to as he entered the Zeta-Tube. "There is no Robin or any other sidekick in Gotham. Not again." He proceded to teleported away_

 _Nightwing and Batgirl began to look at each other. Batgirl was clearly distressed by Batman's rejection from her._

 _"Don't worry he'll come around," Nightwing told Batgirl. It's clear at this point that the three of them were ignoring us. "I promise," Nightwing said hugging her._

 **COAST CITY**

 _Donna Troy Present_

None of us have talked to this Batgirl. Largely because we didn't want to cross Batman... out of fear.

But it appears as though Batman and Nightwing have gotten into one of their intractable fights again. You would have thought after what happened to Robin they would be able to sit down for 5 minutes and not yell at each other.

"Ok. I tried it on," Tula said. She emerged in a blue and black costume with long sleeves, pants, and her belly showing. "I like the design, but the fabric is awful." I feel the fabric and instantly agree.

"Come on let's ask the cashier if we can find something in a fabric to your liking," I tell Tula.

The two of us walk up to the cash register. There Tula tried to start talking to the cashier. "Excuse me, do you possible have this with-" we are interrupted by a screaming man outside.

"GET AWAY FROM ME YOU PSYCHO!" some guy yells on the street. That's not what confused us. The guy started using Atlantean magic to send a serpent into the air shattering windows. Tula and I look at each other, nod and head to the changing room. But not to change into something from the store. Eventually the two of us appear in costume and run out of the store. Aquagirl in her yellow swimwear, and I in my black pants and top.

"I promise I'll come back to buy something!" I tell the confused cashier as we run out into the street.

"Where is he heading?" Tula asks me.

"[BOOOOOOOOOOM]" we hear an explosion a few blocks away.

"There," I say pointing to the explosion. I grab Tula and the two of us fly over to the explosion. In the air we are able to see the man running and causing trouble. He appeared to be in traditional American army uniform for man's world, which made his use of Atlantean magic intriguing. He was summoning a serpent and using it to damage buildings.

"Is that a surface soldier using Atlantean magic?" Tula asks me. "That shouldn't be possible."

"Let's investigate," I instruct her.

I fly the two of us into an abandoned building where our target ran into. The building had a bunch of wood boards plugging up the building. I smash one of the walls and let Tula down.

"Was it really necessary to destroy a wall," Tula asks me.

"It's dramatic," I say to defend my move. "I'm not like Batman where I creepily sneak in through a window."

"Didn't you say Batman is always watching?"

I stand there smiling. I turn around still smiling. I keep smiling. I become very uncomfortable smiling. Not as uncomfortable as Batman can make me but I keep smiling.

The guy we were following started running down the hallway clearly out of breath. "[deep breathing] [deep breathing]"

"Looks like it's your unlucky day," I say.

"Any last words," Tula follows up.

The guy looked at us then collapsed onto the floor. He was in a kneeling position looking as though he is about to pray. "Se parakaló voíthisé me," the guy said.

"What?" I asked in confusion.

"He said please help me in Atlantean," Tula translated for me.

"Oh. Thanks."

"Please! I need help! The Shadows are coming for me," the scared man said in English. The Shadows! As in The League of Shadows! I grab him and hold him against the wall, as I assume how Batman would do it. Then Tula holds up a magic sword made of water to his neck.

"Talk!" we both yell at him. The guy instantly panics and starts talking.

"I was working for Oceanmaster! When he betrayed the Light, they cut all ties with him! I was supposed to be an undercover agent, but when everything went south I lost direction. I joined a group of Oceanmaster's other spies but they have slowly been eliminated. Please help me from suffering the same fate."

"Oceanmaster has spies on the surface world?" Tula asked.

"He used them to use them to control international shipping lanes and traffic weapons. Suez and Panama Canals. Singapore. Coast City. Istanbul. Mumbai. Dubai. Johannesburg. Tokyo. He had spies in all of them."

Was that supposed to be impressive? Geo-politics isn't my strong suit. I looked at Tula and she seemed just as confused.

"Why would you tell us this?' Tula asked.

"To ask for protection. Please," he begged. "This guy. The Red Hood. He's killed at least 15 of-"

"[BANG]" a gun went off. A bullet appeared from the man's chest. It was about to hit Tula, but I intercepted it, having it bounce off my wrist.

Tula and I then looked at the spy. He was dead.

"What was-" Tula was cut off.

"[BANG] [BANG] [BANG]" more bullets were fired from the body. I got in front of Tula and deflected bullets for her.

"He's on the other side of the wall," Tula told me. I started moving forward and punched the wall apart.

A cloud dust appeared, but in the confusion Tula was able to make something out.

"There he's running away!" Tula yelled.

"[BANG] [BANG] [BANG]" the unknown individual fired at us as he ran out the door in the room. Tula put up a water wall to intercept the bullets. I get a faint glimpse of the shooter. Their wearing gray and black military equipment with a red hood. This Red Hood only stopped firing because he ran into a hall.

The two of us followed Red Hood into a long hallway. Neither of us have projectiles so we have to run. The hallway was about to split so we looked for which way Red Hood was going to go. Then Red Hood jumped out the window. The two of us reached the window and I couldn't see where the Red Hood went.

"There!" Tula pointed to the far left outside the window. I saw the Red Hood swinging on a grapple.

I grab Tula and the two of us fly after Red Hood, who gives us a good run (fly?) across a few buildings before I can drop Tula.

Now that I've got my hands free I can use my lasso to catch this assassin. I throw my lasso at him. My lasso surrounds him and I think it's going to catch him. Then he jumps into the air and is able to escape my lasso with acrobatics. But he places something in my lasso. I bring my lasso back to me and half way towards me I realize that it's a grenade. I instinctively hold my bracelets in front of me as the explosion forces me back.

"Ok that's impressive," I admit. Not many people have ever escaped my lasso, let alone use it against me. It takes a while for me to get up, but I'm able to fly over to Tula, who stays in pursuit of the Red Hood.

He then jumped off this building into the street from twenty floors up.

"Is he insane?!" Tula asks me as it seems as though he is going to fall to death.

He jumps and hits a window on the side of a nearby building, breaking the glass and entering the building.

"Apparently not," I tell Tula. The two of us then fly over. We enter the building and see an open room on the right. The two of us instantly investigate. There's another door that's open. the two of us look into the door and see it's a closet. "There's nothing-" Then I look down and see a bomb. "TULA WE HAVE TO-" the bomb went off.

I couldn't tell what went on after that. I think several of the floors had collapsed. I was surrounded by rubble. I couldn'e hear well either I pushed off some of the rubble but the dust and impact was giving me headaches.

I was able to make out somebody walking towards me. I think it is Tula. Tula pulls something out to seemingly help me. Then it released some sort of line that connected to me. Then everything went black.

One Day Later

 **LOCATION UNKOWN**

 _Robin's Mind POV_

I have to keep running! I don't know why but I haven't felt out of energy every since this all started. How long ago was that? It must have been months at this point. I don't sleep here so I can't count days. I also don't eat so I can't count meals either. No showers, besides I guess being hit with water by the Atlanteans, and yet no smell. They were one of the bigger threats. They were one of the bigger threats in this world.

I don't know exactly what this world is supposed to be. It looks like some sort of mixture between Gotham City, Atlantis, Themyscira, and Happy Harbor. Somehow the Hall of Justice, Lex Corp towers, the Hall of Justice, even Oa. I don't know why my mind is processing reality like this. Maybe Miss Martian was responsible for this.

SHE DID THIS TO ME!

Calm down Jason. That what their goal might have been, to drive you crazy.

I call it Illusion City. Should I be giving names to an imaginary place. I shouldn't give a name to a place where I don't want to return to.

Whatever M'gann did to me it separated my consciousness from my brain. It initially placed me in a eternal darkness, but after the Joker toxin got into my system. The world changed. It constructed some demented monstrosity. Then when Essence and Talia injected me with fear toxin it created some version of the Batcave centered around Nightwing. The third time this place was formed. I think M'gann had something to do with it. I don't know why but I can feel it.

Miss Martian's conscious was still inside my mind. She's been hunting me for months. The members of her Cabal hunted me in here. Of course nothing in here is physical, but I don't want to take my chances and die here. I know she's controlling them because of the same feeling I get when I am here, that she is the center of it all. I think she can't do anything in my mind without me feeling her presence.

There is still the lingering question of what her conscious is doing in my body. It's possible it was placed here during my last encounter with M'gann in the real world. Or maybe she's been here longer than that.

That Essence chick was also no help. Could really use a psychic here. Information was a one way street with her. Whatever I tell her doesn't go back, but she delivers a robotic message. She probably doesn't even know that she keeps appearing before me in weird anime-esque cosplay. I am weirdly happy about that last part.

Occasionally this world shuts down. It just floats away into darkness. Just a pure dark abyss. No pain, no fear, and no running. It's so peaceful. If only I could make it permanent, to just permanently leave this world. To exist in a pure state of darkness is much better than this place.

But that hasn't happened for a while.

But right now I have to run. Right now I was running into the Fortress of Solitude. These places were all based on my memories.

"[BOOM]" I hear an explosion come in behind me.

"JJJJJJJAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN," I hear somebody scream behind me. I look behind myself and see Black Canary and Captain Atom both Jokerized. Great it's one of those times. Luthorized. Naziized. Martianized. It's as if they all got a skin pack when they confronted me.

"There he is!" Captain Atom pointed to me.

"I'm going to get you Jason. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," the two of them laughed together. Captain Atom fired some energy blots at me with color scheme of green and purple. I jump into the fortresses armory. When Mongul busted into this place on Superman's birthday I saw Wonder Woman used some of the arms in here. I can't use a plasma gun on Captain Atom (which makes most alien weapons useless) but there should be other stuff I can use here.

"[CANARY CRY]"

Black Canary uses her Canary cry on me. I start to fall onto the floor as it hurts my ears. I grab one of the implosion grenades and slide it over to her and Captain Atom. The grenade went off bringing the two of them to the ground. It won't hold them forever, but at least I can grab weapons. If I run into Zatanna or Green Lantern later I might try to run through the Batcave to grab a new utility belt. Though I'd rather not try and siege the Batcave again if the two of them are guarding it.

"YOU [breath] are never [breath] NEVER TAKING ME," I yell at them while throwing a canister of knockout gas at them.

I run through the Fortress of Solitude's exit and enter into Atlantis. Good thing the capital city has an air bubble surrounding it after the Atlantean civil war. Entrance and exits here also didn't work like in real life. I enter a door to Wayne Tower and end up in the Themysciran palace.

I look around to see if anybody was in the throne room. When I see the ground floor clear. I open my utility belt to see what weapons I have left. 18 Batarangs all explosive. Taser. 9 glue grenades. Some anti-shark bat-spray.

"[BOOOM]" I turn around to see that one of the palace walls has been breached. I look over and see a water serpent come at me. That means either Tula or Garth.

I use one of my explosive Batarangs to take out the serpent. I run towards to hole in the wall. I can barely make out who is there. Only one hostile. Tula or Garth. I don't know who is there but I kick them anyway.

It takes me a while but eventually I realize it's Tula. Then the world did something that it hadn't done in a while. It turned to darkness. I did this a few times at the beginning of... whatever this was. Miss Martian did something to me and ever since I've been a prisoner of my own mind.

Eventually I hit the ground. It's difficult to tell what is ground in this world of eternal darkness. When I hit the ground I took a breather. The state of darkness is my only time to rest. Even though I didn't get tired or feel the need sleep in Illusion City, taking a breather was important. I am starting going crazy in there. Just taking some time and not having to worry about the treat of cyborg Hawkman or the others. The ones who put me here. Zatanna, Garth, Tula, John Stewart, Canary, Hawkman, Cap Atom, Karen, and Mal. For some weird reason Miss Martian hadn't appeared yet as one of these threats. Maybe because she has taken over my body.

DON'T WORRY ABOUT HER JASON.

Have to keep focus on staying sane. Batman will help me. He's probably looking for me right now. I have to stall for him.

Bruce will come.

Then I look over and see something in the darkness. That's odd this place generally had nothing here.

I slowly walk over. As I get closer I see that it's a metal chain with a white cloth over it, like something at a meat factory.

I pulled off the white cloth and as it disintegrates into darkness, I realize who it is.

"Tula!" I say in surprise.

"[cough] [cough]" she responds. I grab her face.

"HEY TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON," I yell at her.

Why did you ask that question Jason she isn't real! The Scarecrow toxin or M'gann is doing this to you. Quit pretending anything is real.

"Ha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA," Tula laughed mockingly. Then her skin started to turn green. She got (more) freckles too. She had become Martianized. The chain restraints appeared to be holding her. "You think that I will tell you-" she is cut off by my fist to her face.

"Yes you will!" I tell her.

"You know your father could hit harder than that."

I start to beat her further. It's not real but it feels so real... and so good. It feels more real than anything that I've done for months.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," she continued to laugh. "You think this can stop me Jason!"

"I... I... I..." I'm unable to feel words. Everything seems so nauseating. It feels as though all of reality is crashing down at me.

I get up and held my fist up. I punch her face. It feels amazingly real. It's as if I'm hitting a real person.

"Stop thinking and hit me more baby," she says licking her blood stained lips. "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

I punch her like a punching bag. Each time one of my fist hits her it feels more empowering. It's intoxicating. Like a small bit of me comes closer to entering reality again and again.

"Why do you feel so real?" I ask her. "Everybody else in here doesn't feel this real."

"Maybe I am real," she mocks me. "You think you are ever going to be able to escape this place. Queen M'gann-" that's a very weird name for M'gann "-gave you an offer. To help the Cabal wipe evil off the face of the earth and you said no."

"Placing a kid in a mental prison is also very evil ya know," I respond. "So is lobotomizing another kid, and creating a great power conflict in the Horn of Africa."

"Oh get over the Enrea thing. It stopped Queen Bee's advances across the world."

"Are you serious?" I ask her. "You started the world's largest humanitarian crisis to defeat a third rate power. People do not get over that."

"You think the Bialya is a third rate power?!" she snapped back at me. "Do you have any idea what they have done?"

"Like what?" I inquire. I wonder if...

"They took over Qurac." Not what I'm looking for. "They mowed down anybody in their way." Closer. "They killed Garfield's MOM!" she says that last one crying. BINGO!

"Ha..." 'Tula' starts to pay closer attention. "Ha. Ha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA." I begin to laugh evilly.

"What-What are you laughing about?" 'Tula' says.

"Of course it's you! HAHAHAHA. You almost pulled it off. But you couldn't resist the bait of showing your hate for Queen Bee," I begin to walk in a circle surrounding her. I haven't been able to summon these since the beginning of all this. Eventually I'm able to summon them. The two fire swords then appeared before me.

"What are you doing?" 'Tula' said in a mix of shock, curiosity, and horror. I cut the floor and a ring of fire appeared around her.

"What do you think? Miss Martian!" I tell her. 'Tula' begins to transform.

"HAHAHAHAHA-[RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRR]"

'Tula' then uses her more distinct features to look more like Miss Martian. She was clearly energy deprived from the fire circle as she hung before me.

 **LEAGUE OF ASSASINS SAFE HOUSE, COAST CITY**

 _Essence POV_

My mistress sent me to retrieve Jason. This was the first act of rebellion as a member of the League of Shadows. He was mainly subservient. But he was supposed to meet me in San Francisco and never showed up. I'm not physically about to see him, but rather I've tethered myself to his soul allowing me to establish a degree of psychic contact no matter how far away I am. Though this can be a very tiring process and requires a willing participant.

Eventually I was able to use him to generate a psychic form that appears before him. As soon as I appear it seems as though Jason is ignoring me. "Jason," I call out to him. He ignores me. I start to see what is around him. It seems as though he is working out. He was hitting a punching bag. He was also still wearing his field equipment.

"JASON!" I yell at him. He didn't respond to me, but he hit the punching bag harder. It seemed as though some blood hit the floor. Must be hitting that punching bag really hard.

I didn't want to have to do this, but I have to make more direct contact. I start to access his mind. I generally access this to see his memories from a recent mission, or stuff from his previous life. But this time I am consumed by emotions.

 **I HATE YOU!**

 **WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS!**

 **YOU DESERVE THIS!**

I don't know why this is happening. He is generally an empty shell, nothing but a robot to be deployed. Yet this rage. It's unlike anything I have ever felt.

The anger, it's intoxicating. I start to be able to visualize his emotions. I don't know how but he is somehow channeling that rage into the punching bag. There is blood spilling onto the floor. Eventually he stops.

Jason walks over to a counter and grabs some alcohol and starts drinking. Somehow this actually calms him. Then more blood starts to hit the floor. That's odd he's not hitting the punching bag, so why would there be more blood.

Then I looked at the punching bag. I realized that it wasn't a punching bag he was hitting. A pair of metal chains held a bloody body up from the ceiling. I couldn't make out the face because a bag was covering it. But the yellow swimwear-costume made it clear who it was.

"PLEASE!" the captive yelled through the bag. "PLEASE STOP!"

 **MOUNT JUSTICE MEDICAL WING**

 _Troia POV_

I start to wake up slowly. I'm in the hospital? I'm unable to remember how I got here.

"DONNA," I hear somebody yell off to my side. I look over and see Diana at my side. Rocket and Miss Martian too. "How are you feeling?" Diana asks me.

"Horrible. Like I've had every pain receptor in my body go off. But I want to say fine to look cool," I didn't know why I said that. I then realized that I was touching my lasso of truth.

"Well you should feel awful!" Rocket said. "A third of a building collapsed on you girl. You're lucky Green Lantern found you in the wreckage and brought you here yesterday, you could have ended up in a coma."

"What happened Donna, weren't you going out with Tula?" Miss Martian asked in concern. "How did you end up in a blown up building?"

"I um..." I try to piece together what happened, but some it is still fuzzy. "I remember that we were trying on clothes in Coast City, then somebody ran through the street's using Atlantean magic. We caught up to the guy, where he begged..." what did he say?

"Begging for a merciful beatin from girl power?" Rocket suggested.

"Begged for protection!" I remembered. "He said he was an Oceanmaster's subordinate, he was being hunted by somebody else."

"Where is this subordinate?" Miss Martian asked with subtle anger. "I can help get information." I pause for a second as I go through my memories, trying to remember.

"He's dead," I say darkening the atmosphere. "Tula and I restrained him against a wall. The assassin shot from the other side, killing him."

"Was the subordinate killed in an abandoned building a few blocks away?" I hear a new voice appear. In the door way I see Aquaman.

"Yeah, I think that's where it happened."

"[SIGH]. I think I know what is happening. While Oceanmaster has been defeated, since he went into hiding the Light has not taken his betrayal of them lightly." Neither did any of the Atlanteans on the team. "For weeks now the Atlantean embassy in DC has been receiving... packages," He spoke that last word with awkwardness.

"What were these packages?" Diana asked.

"Bodies," Aquaman quickly responded. The rest of us had our eyes widen. "At least 12. All of them Atlantean and working for Oceanmaster in the surface world."

"So you think the guy Donna and Tula fought is the same one who sent you the bodies," Rocket inquired. "For real. That's messed up."

"It's possible," Aquaman responded. "The Light was probably upset when Oceanmaster betrayed them, so they could be trying to go for revenge by targeting his operatives."

"Wait!" I ask everyone to get their attention. "Where is Tula?" She was not in the room here. Was she in the field or another medical facility.

"Tula was last seen with you," Aquaman said in sorrowful concern.

"Wait you mean that creep captured her!" I exclaimed.

 **LEAGUE OF ASSASINS SAFE HOUSE, COAST CITY**

 _Essence POV_

Jason appeared to be spilling alcohol on the ground. He was walking around his victim's hanging body and spilled the drink. When he nearly reached a full circle he stopped. He then splashed her with the remaining alcohol. The victim had a bag of some sort over their head. She screamed for air as she realized she was being water-boarded. As an Atlantean she would have been expected to do well against water-boarding. Expected. Water boarding cuts of air from the lungs, not give water to the gills. This would probably be the one of the few Atlanteans who would feel what it is like to drown. It seemed as though his victim was feeling the experience.

"muh muhhhhhhhhhh," Aquagirl attempted to scream. She would have screamed louder if it weren't for the bag.

Jason punched her in response to her screams. She struggles more but silently, she probably wanted to call out for help more but couldn't take the thought of drowning again.

Jason then brought out one of his All-Blades, setting the alcohol on fire, engulfing her in a circle of fire. From a distance she seemed like a fish being cooked over a fire.

 **LOCATION UNKOWN**

 _Robin's Mind POV_

"Well M'gann, I can't say I didn't expect you to be here, because who else would be here?" I tell her.

"You would be surprised who lurks in the back of your mind," M'gann said.

"What you're going to tell me that Joker is hiding here. You're not the first person to try that trick"

"Worth trying."

"How long have you been here?"

"It's been a few months since our encounter on the Watchtower Jason-"

"I doubt it, I think you have been here longer than that."

"How long do you think?" she asks in concern.

"The beginning," I tell her as she to keep a poker face. "That you placed a little bit of your subconscious in every human you've ever met."

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm not trying to manipulate every person on earth like some puppet master. I'm not Batman."

"Not necessarily control the mind as influence it." I approach her to stare her in the face as I tell her the next part. "That you have always had a deep insecurity at the back of your mind. That you, growing up part of a despised minority on Mars drove you to put small suggestions into everybody you ever met on Earth."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"I like Megan. I think she's a wonderful person," I say mockingly.

"I don't need to do that to make anyone like me."

"Maybe so. But it couldn't hurt could it. To have a small bit of Superboy's mind automatically think-" I whisper this part into her ear "I love-"

"LIAR!" she yells at me in rage.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. M'gann's insecure. M'gann's insecure. M'gann's insecure. M'gann's insecure. M'gann's insecure." I mocked her.

"SHUT UP."

"Hmmmmmmmmmmm..." I ponder out loud. I could use some more information. I wonder if I could get it through torture.

"What?" she asks with curiosity. I throw one of the fire swords, piercing her body on contact. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," she screams.

"I was wondering if you were edible." M'gann hung there surrounded by fire, looking like a fish about to be cooked.

 **LEAGUE OF ASSASINS SAFE HOUSE, COAST CITY**

 _Essence POV_

Jason just threw his sword at Aquagirl. It wasn't on fire when it entered her. But as it was inside her it caught fire.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," Aquagirl screamed in pain as she was roasted alive.

Was he trying to roast her or something. As I stood there the other sword went through the air and into Aquagirl. The swords stayed there for a while.

"[DEEP BREATHING]" Aquagirl struggles as the mask is still wet causing her to suffocate through water boarding while being roasted. To simultaneously be burned alive while drowning.

The swords then disappeared. He must have recalled them using the All-Blades soul storage ability. I saw his blades appear again this time in his hands before he threw them into Aquagirl's legs.

Then he repeated the process again, throwing them into her hands. And again. It continued until I felt a need to intervene because of my initial mission. I lost count how many times he used her like a human dartboard.

"Ja-" I attempt to say before stopping. Mistress Talia would not want me to reveal Jason's identity, even if Aquagirl was screaming too much to hear me call him out. "Red Hood!" I don't think he's going to like being referred to as the Joker's old identity (Mistress herself was complaining about them.), but it's going to have to do.

He had thrown one of his two swords into her when he stopped and listened to me.

"Commander what do you want me to do," he asked me. I thought he was focused soley on me, then he threw his other sword into Tula.

"Stop and focus on me!" I tell him. He proceeds to stop, but he also radiant disappointment. He was enjoying what he was doing a lot. "Meet me at the San Francisco facility ASAP."

"I have an objective here, I'll come to you later," he responded. WHAT! He always followed orders. Why is he being- Well Aquagirl was one of the Leaguers responsible for his mental situation. Perhaps he is trying to extract revenge on her.

I get a new mental warning.

"Red Hood. The Justice League is coming. Aqualad, Nightwing, and Artemis are approaching," I warn him.

"What do you wish me to do with them commander?" he asked me with annoyance.

"Retreat and meet me."

"[Grunt] Fine," he reluctantly agrees. First he picked something out of a bag. Some C4? What's he planning to do with that?

 **LOCATION UNKOWN**

 _Robin's Mind POV_

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," M'gann screams at the new sword.

"Come on bitch you're a shape shifter shouldn't you be able to shape shift away any wounds you receive," I respond.

"You know that's not why I'm screaming," she responded in pain. I throw another sword at her stomach.

"Your screaming because I enjoy it," I say sadistically. In my enjoyment I notice something with that last sword I threw. There is a blue light coming out of M'gann's stomach. "What's this?" I move closer to M'gann to see the blue light.

"Stay away from that!" she yelled.

I ignored her and pulled out another All-Blade. When I got close enough, I cut open her abdomen, creating a line that crossed her belly-button. This generated even more light. I put my hand in and I start to feel compelled to do stuff.

 **SURPASS YOUR MENTOR WALLY (but you will always be slower)**

 **DO NOT RUIN OUR FRIENDSHIPS DICK (yet marry in our family)**

 **YOU WERE MENT FOR ME CONNER (ignore anyone other whore)**

 **DON'T REPLACE ARTEMIS ROY (you have more pressing matters to get to)**

 **TULA AND GARTH AQUALAD (you'll find somebody eventually)**

What is this? I attempted to remove my hand from the light but can't.

"What are you doing?!" I ask in panic. I start to be dragged into the light being created by M'gann.

"Absorbing you," she replied. She then expanded the blue light at will and I was dragged into the light against my will. I attempted to grapple away from the hole, but there was nothing in the darkness to grapple to and I just fell into the light.

 **LEAGUE OF ASSASINS SAFE HOUSE, COAST CITY**

Ten Minutes Later

 _Nightwing POV_

"I've got heat signatures on the other side of this wall," I inform Aqualad and Artemis.

"Can we breach," Aqualad asked me.

"Yes," I respond.

"Placing explosives." Artemis declared.

The facility was an abandoned car manufacturing factory. We scanned the place with a heat sensor and found the center of the facility had a lot of heat surrounding it. It took a while to find this place, but eventually we were able to trace the League of Shadows fake corporate network to this place. It was the only spot in Coast City that the Red Hood could have taken Aquagirl to.

"Breach in 5," Aqualad instructed us. "5. 4. 3. 2. 1."

"[BOOOOOOOOOOOM]" the wall and the door collapses.

The three of us ran into the room.

"FREEZE," Aqualad instructed the unknown person in the center of the room.

When the smoke caused from the explosion is cleared we can see who is at the center. To our horror we realize what happened here.

Tula was hanging from the cieling with a wall of fire surrounding her.

"TULA!" Aquald screamed. He used his water swords to take out all the fire in the room.

He saw her condition and knew that she needed help as soon as possible. He ran up to her and tried to help get her out of the chains. He cut her chains from the ceiling allowing her to fall down. He helped her off the ground and took off the bag.

Tula's condition looks really bad. The bruises indicates that she had been horrible beaten. The open wounds indicate that whoever tortured her was here only recently. The burns were still new. The only injury that healed were stitches on her belly. But that wasn't the noticeable body damage on her. There was a scar on her face cut into the letter J.

"Aqualad whoever did this might be nearby," I tell Aqualad. "Should we pursue?" I ask the leader. Artemis lowered her bow to prepare to run if necessary.

Aqualad didn't respond. Artemis and I approached Aqualad cradling Aquagirl.

"Aqualad, I'm taking over the team," I say. Aqualad doesn't respond, but Artemis merely acknowledges my authority. "Artemis with me. We need to scan the area, see if this guy is still here." Artemis looks at Tula then looks at me.

"On it!" she says.

"Nightwing to Cave. Hostile has disappeared, but Aquagirl is in critical condition. I need somebody to transport her to a medical facility as soon as-" I pause for a second as my scanner reveals something. "Oh no."

"What!" Aqualad paid attention to my statement.

"Artemis do you have any sedatives!" I ask her in panic.

"No. Why?" Artemis responded.

"Damn it! I'm out as well," I say out loud in panic. "Kaldur I need you to let me perform surgery on Tula NOW."

"What?" Kaldur said in confusion.

"Artemis, Kaldur I need you two to hold her down while I perform this surgery."

"You are going to do surgery on her WITHOUT ANESTISIA," Artemis yelled at me.

"I wouldn't do this if I didn't have another choice!" I snapped back at her. I point to the stitches on Tula's belly. "Somebody inserted an explosive into Tula via this scar." The two of them then looked at me in horror.

"Nightwing, I got all that," Kid Flash told me over coms. "I'm 5 minutes out."

"If we wait for Wally he can bring-" Artemis tries to suggest to me.

"I don't have a time on the bomb, we have to start now," I respond.

"Do it," Kaldur says reluctantly.

We lay the her on the ground. Artemis holds her torso and lower body, Aqualad holds her hands and upper body down to restrain her.

I pull out a Batarang and start to undo the stitches to open up Tula.

"Ah... ah... AHHH" Tula started to scream. She was also fighting back against Aqualad and Artemis.

"Hold her still, I can't do surgery if she's struggling!" I tell the two of them.

Once all the stitches are undone. I begin the hard part. I can use the sensors in my mask to find where the bomb is. I insert my hand into Tula's abdoninan. I have to be careful.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," Tula yells as my hand enters her body. Artemis and Aqualad placed a greater force on Tula to make sure that she doesn't get injured while I search for the bomb.

"Nightwing move faster!" Aqualad yells at me.

"I'm trying!" I snap back.

Have to move my hands carefully. Be slow Nightwing. Cannot risk damaging any of Tula's organs.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," Tula yelled in agony, trying to break free of our grasp.

"I've got it!" I exclaim. "Removing the bomb now."

"MOVE FASTER!" Aqualad yelled at me in concern.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," Tula yelled in agony.

It takes a while but eventually I'm able to remove the bomb from Tula.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-" Tula yells. "-HHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." her screams end when I am able to remove the bomb with my hands, causing her to lose consciousness.

I check my scanners to see if it is worse.

It is. Her heart has stopped beating.

"Kaldur, Artemis get back!" I tell them. Artemis moves, but Kaldur doesn't. I pull out a defibrillator anyways. I attatche them to Tula's heart and lower chest. "Kaldur get out of the way!" He doesn't respond to my request. No choice, have to take command.

I shove Kaldur aside, tossing him a few feet away then activate the defibrillator.

"CLEAR!" I declare. I check the vitals. No heart beat.

"CLEAR!" I declare. I check the vitals. Still no heart beat.

"CLEAR!" I declare. I check the vitals. No heart beat. I look over and see a in shock Kaldur and Artemis off to my side. I can't let this happen.

"CLEAR!" I declare in range. I check the vitals. Heart beat. "We've got pulse!" I declare in triumph, the other two are still in shock by what they witnessed.

"I'm here!" Kid Flash exclaims running into the room, interrupting my victory. "My god!" he said as he looked at Tula.

"Kid Flash take her to the nearest hospital NOW!" I tell him. He picks her up and runs out of the room.

"What about the bomb?!" Artemis asks me in concern. I take a look at the explosive and realize something is off.

"What the hell?!" I say out loud.

"What is it?" Aqualad asks in concern.

"The bomb was... it wasn't armed."

There is silence amongst the three of us

"SO WE TORTURED TULA FOR NOTHING!" Aqualad yelled at me in rage.

"I-I-" I'm unable to come up with a response for that.

"YOU WHAT!" Aqualad yelled at me, grabbing my costume. "HOW COULD YOU KNOW IT WAS NOT ARMED!"

"Kaldur calm down," Artemis said, standing between me and him, breaking his grip. Kaldur punched the ground a couple of times. He then stopped and was quiet for a second, calming down.

"Why would somebody do this to her?" Aqualad said in sorrow.

I take another look on the bomb. There is a letter on it.

"Guys look at this," I call them over to read the letter together.

I opened the letter. The text was written in blood, with a violent font.

 **HOPED YOU LIKED HURTING YOUR FRIEND DUMBASS**

 **HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA**

 **YOU DID THIS ME YOU PSYCHOTIC BITCH**

 **I'M THE HERO OF THIS STORY NOT HER**

 **SHE DESERVES IT IT IT**

"What does this mean?" Artemis asked.

"Her captor put in a disarmed bomb in Tula knowing that we would have to remove it without anesthesia," I tell them.

"He wanted up to torture our own friend," Aqualad said in revelation. The rest of us look down in sorrow. "What type of person would do that to Tula?"

* * *

 **Please comment. Hopefully I'll be back to the main story next time.**


	15. Update

**Update.**

 **I WILL CONTINUE THIS STORY just in the rewritten version.**

 **I've decided to rewrite this fanfic from the begining. There will be some continuity changes from the origional and I will put a list of them here when I've updated them to the point where I am here. But for now I'm rewriting this story as Young Justice: The Grand Hero Conspiracy. I think I'll also cannonize my other fanfic Explaining things to non-humans into that story.**

 **I really want to try and improve the first 9ish chapters. I think I can write better now then when I first started.**

 **Thanks for reading and I hope you read the rewrite.**


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